by wj
Sometimes, I get serious cognative dissonance in real time. Right now, my local all news station (KCBS) is saying that “a new national poll shows a dead heat” in the Presidential race. Meanwhile, the Washington Post/Survey Monkey poll, just out today, shows . . . a toss-up in Texas. And in Mississippi! (In addition to Arizona and Georgia. And Ohio, North Carolina, etc., of course.)
So what’s happening? Who knows? I guess it’s a lesson in why you shouldn’t look at a single poll and assume that it has the one true story.
Aggregate, aggregate, aggregate. State polls, preferably, though some fold national polls in as well to see short-term variations. Of course precisely how you do the aggregation will give you different pictures of the race as well, but there will be less outright craziness.
…Remember, if you have some large number N of polls and they have some kind of randomly varying error, the error in an aggregate will go down roughly like the inverse square root of N. But the error in the most extreme outliers will go up roughly as the square root of N. If you primarily read news stories about individual polls, they will predominantly direct you to the wildest outliers, because those make for the most interesting stories. So the discrepancy between SHOCK POLL stories and aggregators will increase markedly as the number of polls goes up.
I tend to look at FiveThirtyEight, since they’ve done the aggregating. I don’t take it as gospel by any stretch, but it’s about as good as it gets AFAICT.
I have a fondness for 538 myself. No least because their track record in general elections is good.
But I’m enough of a political junkie that I can’t resist looking at individual polls. And trying to figure out (with no formal methodology at all) what it might mean.
And trying to figure out (with no formal methodology at all) what it might mean.
Sign of the apocalypse?
So what’s happening?
after a few weeks of beating up on Trump for the things he actually said, the media started beating up on Clinton for things they made up – lest this race stop looking much like a race and people stop giving the nice social media clicks they so crave.
The really HORRIBLE thing about the media coverage of the election, is that it’s driving me to agree with Ann Coulter about something.
When she said back in 2001 that it would have been better if the 9/11 terrorists had flown their planes into the NYT building.
For the first time since 1940,the Dallas Morning News has endorsed a Democrat for President.
The hits just keep on coming. Is there anything Trump can’t accomplish?
So they endorsed Nixon three times? That’s….quite something.
“Is there anything Trump can’t accomplish?”
According to the latest polls, no.
Hey, for the 40% backing him, the Dallas Morning news might as well be an elitist Intersectionalitist explaining the obvious reason for Hillary’s coughing fits.
Her throat is dry. Same as mine.
It’s probably not all Trump’s fault. Dallas has probably undergone significant “bluing” over the last several years. But, still, that’s something.
The went for Kasich in the GOP primary over a very likable Texan, too.
I tend to look at FiveThirtyEight…
Over the last three weeks and a bit, FiveThirtyEight’s polls-only has had Clinton’s probability of victory decline from 89.2% to 68.1%, with the rate of decline increasing about ten days ago. The polls-plus number has her at 66.7%. Clearly something is happening, even in poll aggregates.
Myself, I’ve said all along that the national vote percentages will be relatively close (I have Clinton 47, Trump 43, Johnson 7 in the only pool I’m in). I claim that, with the possible exception of the Northeast, she’s not a candidate that gets the rank-and-file Dem or independent voter excited
She’ll have short coattails. Sam Wang at Princeton has the likely Senate split at 50-50. It would probably be 49-51 with the Republicans holding on except that the Colorado Republicans nominated a miserable candidate. How bad? Mike Bennett was supposed to be vulnerable, but was +15% in the most recent poll (to Clinton’s +3%).
Michael, aren’t those 538 numbers the probability of victory? Not the percentage of the vote they will get.
all this sturm und drang over the last few months, and the two are just about at the same place now as at the start of summer.
If this pattern holds, HRC will get a big bounce off the debates and cruise to victory as her numbers fall.
One can only hope.
cruise to victory…
I’m not quite as sure.
This is the best article I’ve seen so far on the contest, and I’m worried, too:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/lauers-pathetic-interview-made-me-think-trump-can-win.html
I still think it likely that Clinton will win, but the 30% or so imputed chance for Trump does not seem absurd. And while clearly a more competent performer than Trump (to put it mildly), Clinton is just awful in front of a large audience. More or less irrelevant when it comes to actually governing, but rather more so in terms of getting elected….
Taibbi, saying something similar, but in a more entertaining manner:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-unconquerable-trump-w438545
Read the transcript (as only one in a thousand voters might), and you’ll get a completely different impression:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/07/the-first-hillary-clinton-vs-donald-trump-showdown-of-2016-annotated/
Shades of the Kennedy/Nixon debate, but reflected in a distorting mirror.
my prediction for the debates is: Trump will absolutely bury Clinton in a torrent of bullshit. Clinton will be unable to counter even 1/20th of the nonsense and will eventually show some slight sign of frustration or anger at this. that will be what the press focuses on: “Clinton unable to stand up to Trump; does she have what it takes to lead?!”
the expectations for Trump are so low that he’ll win as long as he behaves like an adult most of the time.
We’ll know that the US is heading for catastrophe when the GOP commenters here (Marty and McTx), who have been in the #NeverTrump camp, execute a 180 and go all-in for Trump because reasons.
Watch and see.
i’ve been waiting. i think they’re almost there.
my guess: more in sorrow than in joy, they’ll be forced to support Trump because Clinton is Clinton.
The question is whether Clinton can quit losing votes to the Libertarians and Greens. The race has narrowed but Trump really hasn’t gone up a lot, Clinton has just come down.
I will be happy enough to vote for Johnson/Weld and let the rest of you pick between the others.
Waiting for me to back Trump will be an infinite endeavor.
The challenges for Trump are twofold:
First, his paths to victory are extremely narrow. He not only has to win every single swing state where he is even marginally ahead. He also has to win almost every state where he is only behind by 5% or so. Miss in one or two of them, or one medium to large one, and he’s done.
Second, when it comes to the debates, cleek says “the expectations for Trump are so low that he’ll win as long as he behaves like an adult most of the time.” That may be true when it comes to “winning” the debates.
But then, those proclaiming who the winner is are people who have been paying close attention to politics for the last year or more. The folks who have not been may well not have the same low expectations that we do.
On top of which, behaving like an adult doesn’t seem to be Mr. Trump’s forte. Especially since Mrs. Clinton has been practicing against exactly Mr. Trump’s sort of attack. (It’s not like it will be as surprise to anyone.) Mr. Trump’s track record suggests that he can be relied upon to lash out in response to someone pointing out his contradictions and errors. Just think how he will react if she brings up the fact that he is being sued by those little girls who performed at a couple of his events — because he stiffed them, just like he routinely does others who work for him.
Could Trump win the election? Sure. But odds are at least as good that he loses, and by a huge margin in electoral votes.
Gary Johnson? the guy who doesn’t know what Aleppo is ?
yeah, good choice.
Stein? the woman who thinks wifi is a public health hazard?
sign. me. up.
“I will be happy enough to vote for Johnson/Weld and let the rest of you pick between the others.”
Hey dude, that Aleppo stash is bomb shit. Clue me in, what is an Aleppo, man? I that near Encino?
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-gary-johnson-what-is-1473338153-htmlstory.html
Between Cheech and Chong squinting while bogarting their libertarian doobies rolled from pages torn out of Atlas Shrugged, and the Matt Lauer media sucking Trump dick, America’s going to get its fucking wish.
When Trump Inc and Chief of Staff General Boynton are stealing the oil from Iraq, and Ryan is murdering Obamacare recipients, the hopes of every stinking vermin Republican from the Iraq travesty get go on through the nigger Kenyan’s time in the White House will be fulfilled.
I hope they jail Clinton, on the first day, maybe in the afternoon, after Trump and Putin hack into the US Treasury early that morning to fund the casinos going up in Crimea, so we can break her put of there in hails of gunfire and drag her coughing to sanctuary, where she can help us plan the greatest and deadliest insurrection since the Civil War.
We won’t let her speak in front of crowds since she’s so terrible at it, but surely she can handle a converted fully automatic AR-15.
On the other hand, I kind of hope Johnson/Weld win the thing, because it’s going to be hilarious watching the first Libertarian President declare martial law throughout large swathes of America, after all these years of their handing out of the weaponry that will be used to kill the truly deserving and wade through hip-deep republican blood to maintain Libertarian order, but they will have to.
Marty, we’re going to need to see your private emails. There’s got to be more to what you are up to.
Why don’t you just piss on your ballot and we’ll put it in the undecided pile? Please vote for Trump? That way we’ll know where everyone fucking stands.
Or vote for Stein, who picks up Aleppo on her lead dental fillings, since she doesn’t trust why fie.
I wonder who these fake voter drive canvassers work for? Kelly Ann?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/kennesaw-state-possible-fake-voter-registration
The black students approached by these franchise thieves should shoot first and then stomp their heads.
But odds are at least as good that he loses, and by a huge margin in electoral votes.
those chickens are just eggs, at this point.
We’ll know that the US is heading for catastrophe when the GOP commenters here (Marty and McTx), who have been in the #NeverTrump camp, execute a 180 and go all-in for Trump because reasons.
Watch and see.
Better pack some meals. I’m not voting for Trump, period full stop. Also, I’m not a Republican which I thought I had made clear on a number of occasions. I am conservative on many issues and traditionally liberal on others. What I am not is a progressive. Nor am I a partisan. I do not feel obliged to ignore or minimize the warts on candidates I most identify with, nor do I feel the need to have one set of rules for those I disagree with and another set for those in my general neck of the woods.
Gary Johnson? the guy who doesn’t know what Aleppo is ?
I’m not voting for this guy either, but not because he isn’t current on Syrian geography. Obama said there were 57 states. He didn’t know when the constitution was ratified. But still, he kept your loyalty, no questions asked. Double standards.
Clinton didn’t smile while talking about ISIS and veterans.
That must mean something.
On the other hand, maybe she did and Americans couldn’t see it through their shit-brown eyes.
The question is asked how it is that we have 320 million people in this country and Clinton and Trump, apparently the worst two of us, including mass murderers on death row are all we can come up with for President.
Yeah, well, maybe we overestimate ourselves. Maybe it’s the remaining 319,999,998 of us who are full of shit and Trump, Clinton, and the other nuts are our perfect reflections and we deserve them.
I like that he just asked. I would have preferred that he knew, but his answer on Syria in general and military adventurism is good with me. I am pretty sure Trump would have gone on for ten minutes about Aleppo and then gone and asked someone backstage what the f it was. Hilary would have tried to explain why Syria went to hell in a handbasket during her tenure by, well, blaming it on Bush probably. Then denying ISIS is killing people with weapons we provided to everyone from the Iraqis to the Kurds to the Turks to the Syrian opposition. We just want everyone to have has many guns as we do.
She couldn’t even win a debate where she got to go first and didn’t even have to be on the stage with him. They both suck.
There certainly isn’t a perfect candidate, but I like that the Aleppo thing got around fast. Shows they are a little nervous.
I wonder what it says that nobody here is willing to vote for Trump. But nearly half the country (to an extremely crude first approximation) is.
But nearly half the country (to an extremely crude first approximation) is.
right?
none of the ‘conservatives’ i know say they’re going to vote for Trump. i’ve been trying to figure which of them are lying.
“. Hilary would have tried to explain why Syria went to hell in a handbasket during her tenure by, well, blaming it on Bush probably.”
That wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but since she supported Bush in Iraq she’s not in a position to make that case. Her pretense is that we haven’t intervened enough in Syria–the fact that we support rebels who fight intermingled with Al Qaeda isn’t good enough.
Trump would say he opposed the Iraq War when he didn’t, would oppose intervention while supporting war crimes and in general would say a few sensible things mixed in with utter nonsense. Strap a few million Trumps to typewriters,wait a googleplex number of years and you would get some Shakespeare plays, and a whole slew of mutually inconsistent foreign policy positions.
Don’t care about Johnson (another namesake running for President), but apparently the first two iterations of the NYT story on Aleppo also got it wrong. .
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/johnsons-blown-opportunity/
Hilary would have tried to explain why Syria went to hell in a handbasket during her tenure by, well, blaming it on Bush probably. Then denying ISIS is killing people with weapons we provided to everyone from the Iraqis to the Kurds to the Turks to the Syrian opposition. We just want everyone to have has many guns as we do.
That’s the American way. Don’t stand idly around, arm someone! As far as ISIS goes, Bush took a smoke in the powder magazine and Obama/Clinton tried to extinguish the resulting fire with gasoline.
Shows they are a little nervous.
i doubt Clinton has much to fear from Johnson.
not a lot of overlap between that and the Democratic party.
I do not feel obliged to ignore or minimize the warts on candidates I most identify with, nor do I feel the need to have one set of rules for those I disagree with and another set for those in my general neck of the woods.
Which I guess implies that everyone else, or at least almost everyone else, is somehow appreciably more biased than you are.
With very few exceptions, I don’t see glowing praise for Clinton on this site. Mostly, it’s that she’s at least somewhat better than Trump. I think she’s much better than Trump, which means I really have no choice but to accept her warts, as opposed to minimizing or ignoring them.
Then again, I’m sure my estimation of her warts is far less severe than yours, which we can all chalk up to your higher level of objectivity and relative lack of bias, right? Or is believing you especially lack bias, as compared to others, a bias in and of itself?
Obama said there were 57 states
nothing demonstrates objectivity like disingenuous bullshit.
“After inaugurating New Mexico’s use of private prisons, Johnson made it his top political priority to install a school voucher system (an effort that failed because of the legislature’s opposition). He also annulled public employees’ collective-bargaining rights, slashed funding for social programs, reduced taxes for the wealthy, implemented one of the country’s strictest welfare-reform programs, and pushed for harsher sentencing laws.”
Aleppo by any other name. That’s basically the Republican/Sharia program.
Obama said there were 57 states
Why are conservatives so willing to repeat such utter ‘effing crap?
oops….my error, he did say that. But the gist of the comment stands (conservatives repeat a lot of crap), and I’d lay 5 to 1 that Obama would slaughter Johnson on a civics exam.
sure, he said it. but does anyone here think he actually thought there are 57 states ?
that’s the difference between Johnson and Obama’s statements.
Well, if anyone wants to complain about Hillary’s reflexive war-mongering hawkery, comfort palling around with Wall Street, and the awful feeling that the having Presidents dominated by two families is getting rather ‘dynastic’, I’m sure there will be plenty that chime in.
But if it’s BS about email and how “the academy is objectively commie-influenced” and other RWNJ Hate-Radio talking points, then yes, there will be pushback.
Yes, both candidates have warts. Perhaps Hillary has a warn on her nose (A WITCH! BURN HER! BURN HER!), but Trump is one big walking, talking wart. It helps if the warts you point to are the ones that they actually have.
I blame Obama for the lack of an edit button, and any unclosed HTML tags also, too. He never. even. tried.
When America gets around to bombing Syria, with Putin’s help, and loving it, I hope they don’t ask the New York Times for the target coordinates:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/09/aleppo-rodney-dangerfield-war-torn-cities
Johnson: “Where’s Aleppo. I think I had a delicious pasta carbonara there recently. Decent wine list too.
The New York Times: “It’s the capital of Texas. Aim high, and if we take out Indianapolis by mistake, there are always more bombs.”
Michael, aren’t those 538 numbers the probability of victory? Not the percentage of the vote they will get.
Yes, but they don’t provide a history for their prediction of share of the popular vote (right now, Clinton 46.9%, Trump 43.2%, Johnson 8.5%). From memory (always suspect, of course) their Clinton-Trump popular vote spread has also been narrowing quite a bit over the last few weeks.
“sure, he said it. but does anyone here think he actually thought there are 57 states?”
No, but tens of millions of voters, even those who swear they live in the seven extra states, know for a fact that he actually thought that and still does.
But, after seven or more states violently secede from the Union during a Clinton Presidency and join the Trump/Putin confederation, Hillary will say she visited all 43 states during her Presidency, and it will be pointed here out as proof of something, anything.
Only the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city.
And appears at least twice in Shakespeare.
And say, besides, that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk
Beat a Venetian, and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcisèd dog,
And smote him—thus…
(Othello)
But, whatever.
From memory (always suspect, of course) their Clinton-Trump popular vote spread has also been narrowing quite a bit over the last few weeks.
My always-suspect memory is the same – not just in being always suspect, but that the spread has narrowed. But I also seem to recall reading that, state by state, there were places where Clinton was picking up votes, only they were in places where they would do her no good because they were concentrated in states that were already safe.
So, for example, picking up X votes in California might help her win the popular vote but make virtually no difference in her chances of winning the election. These are “wasted” votes that could be of better use in, say, Florida.
All of which is to say that the narrowing of the margin in the popular vote might be less than the narrowing in the probability of winning the election.
Just to confirm all of our memories, 538’s site also says that her lead has been narrowing. Most places, albeit with a couple of interesting exceptions.
the press’ pivot from pointing out Trump’s insanity, racism and overall unsuitability to attack Clinton for imaginary email scandals has had an effect.
Clinton has some secret private emails discussing the scourge of female menopause with Huma Abedin and conservatives are dying to sniff around in it so Drudge and Hannity can go wild, but Trump blares the goings on at secret, privileged intelligence briefings and conservatives guns remain unfired with the safety on.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/u-s-official-donald-trump-s-body-language-claim-doesn-n644856
Fuck this shit. Blow it all up.
oops….my error, he did say that. But the gist of the comment stands (conservatives repeat a lot of crap), and I’d lay 5 to 1 that Obama would slaughter Johnson on a civics exam.
Yes, an error. People do that. Even me. That’s the point. Partisan’s selectively castigate opponents for minor errors they readily excuse in their own and can be unduly hasty in slamming someone who makes an uncomfortable point.
Partisans also recast the positions of those they disagree with to avoid engaging on the merits and having to confront their own internal errors. We’re seeing a lot of that lately.
Why does Trump wave his hands all over the place while talking? Don’t “made guys” do the same? So he’s a thug, right?
Found more detail on why the NYT should not be commenting on the incompetence of our presidential candidates when it is even more incompetent.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/09/nyt-ridiculing-of-gary-johnson-failed-with-four-major-mistakes.html#more
i’m not a partisan either.
why?
cause i said so.
why the NYT should not be commenting on the incompetence of our presidential candidates
Johnson didn’t know a major city and center of fighting in what might be the biggest foreign policy challenge the next President will face.
NYT is not to blame for that.
Clinton has some secret private emails discussing the scourge of female menopause with Huma Abedin and conservatives are dying to sniff around in it so Drudge and Hannity can go wild, but Trump blares the goings on at secret, privileged intelligence briefings and conservatives guns remain unfired with the safety on.
It’s difficult, amigo, to read the detail of HRC’s private computer activities and come away with the sense that she took national security seriously. It is no surprise that Trump is a different but equally dangerous fool in this regard.
I’ll paraphrase my point: partisans castigate their opponents for egregious errors while simultaneously defending their own kind for the same or similar conduct.
Trump surely deserves a kick in the ass if not forward of the ass for what he did. The same for HRC, only figuratively.
Juan Cole on the embarrassing answers of both of the major candidates–
http://www.juancole.com/2016/09/clinton-ground-troops.html
Trump is in his own universe. Clinton sounds like someone Democrats would be raking over the coals if she were on the Republican ticket. Which on foreign policy, she should be.
Which on foreign policy, she should be.
what about her foreign policy views makes her a Republican?
And yet, no matter what appallingness he commits, he continues to close the gap, as outlined above (I check fivethirtyeight as well, but also the RealClearPolitics poll average, currently putting Hillary only 2.8% ahead).
No matter what he seems to say or do, it makes no difference:
e.g. last night
This really does seem like the runup to Brexit (Trump’s “What is Aleppo” moment, if you recall). Nobody believed it could happen, and then it did.
One of the truly fascinating aspects of the current campaign is that the Democrats are running a candidate whose views on a variety of subjects are basically standard Republican. Not just on foreign policy, but on things like the importance of religion in guiding her actions.
Whereas the Republicans are running a candidate whose views on a variety of subjects, including those and others, are nothing like where the party stands. Indeed, there is only one point on which the candidate and the party platform are in close and consistent agreement. Unsurprisingly, that is the one point where the Trump campaign cared enough to get something in the platform changed.
Actually, if you just looked at the candidates’ statements, without knowing who they were or from which party, the obvious conclusion would be that Clinton was the Republican candidate. While Trump was either the Democratic, or more likely the Libertarian, candidate.
This really does seem like the runup to Brexit (Trump’s “What is Aleppo” moment, if you recall). Nobody believed it could happen, and then it did.
When I tell my friends I’m not pulling the trigger for Trump, the universal response is “how can you vote for Hillary?!?!?!?”.
They all get that Trump is far from ideal, they just think HRC is so much worse that they have no choice.
None of these people are mentally deficient, they just see things a lot differently than most folks here whose views are almost the mirror image.
A frequent subtext, if not an outright expression, I see here with some frequency is that Trump supporters are actually on board with Trump and that they buy into his program to some meaningful degree. I think this is mistaken. I think a sizeable percentage of Trump supporters simply loathe HRC and that is sufficient unto the day for them.
Lefties seem to have difficulty comprehending how anyone could dislike HRC that much, seemingly forgetting their own loathing of GWB (which to lefties, seems entirely rational).
People like Marty and me are considered freaks by both sides. I’m fine with that and I suspect Marty sleeps well at night too.
Can’t speak for anybody else here, but GWB seemed over here to inspire, rather than loathing, something more like semi-sympathetic contempt for stupidity and ignorance, therefore ability to be used by truly loathsome people like Cheney. Authorising the use of torture (by America, it’s still almost hard to believe) may have changed that slightly. McKinney, I didn’t know you did not consider yourself a Republican, I must have missed that. What about you Marty?
Faced with the awful choice, I would vote for GWB over Trump. Try again.
Can’t speak for anybody else here, but GWB seemed over here to inspire, rather than loathing, something more like semi-sympathetic contempt for stupidity and ignorance, therefore ability to be used by truly loathsome people like Cheney
Yes, there was that take on GWB as well. I should have mentioned it. Cheney/HRC is a better example of how left mirrors right and vice versa. Good point.
McKinney, I didn’t know you did not consider yourself a Republican, I must have missed that.
Haven’t been for years. In the late 80’s, early 90’s, the Republican Party was a pretty decent group for the most part. It went off in a ditch mid to late 90’s and has become increasingly crony-ized, if you don’t mind me making up words. Morphing into machine politics like we see in Chicago and the Northeast.
I’m not sure asking if someone “considers himself a Republican” tells you much about them. There are just too many of us (admittedly a small, and shrinking number) who don’t fit the popular image.
For example, I’ve been a Republican for decades. I think I’m pretty conservative on fiscal issues. But somewhere between liberal (like McKinney, definitely not “progressive,” at least as I understand that term) and libertarian on a lot of social issues.
Perhaps as a result, I don’t find myself voting based on which candidate will do the most to combat the moral disaster that I don’t actually see overtaking our country. Just like I don’t vote based on some fantasy about a government conspiracy to “take away our guns.” So, not quite in sync with the stereotype.
Lefties seem to have difficulty comprehending how anyone could dislike HRC that much
indeed.
because the reality of the situation is that, policy-wise and temperamentally, Clinton is a completely standard American politician. while Trump is literally an authoritarian strong-man who knows nothing about the law, the Constitution, how government works, the limits of executive power, the economy, foreign policy, the judiciary… you name it, he don’t know it. and he doesn’t care that he doesn’t know it.
he is completely incoherent and happy to change any position in a flash, if he thinks the audience will like him better. Clinton changed her mind on TPP? good! Trump has changed his mind on everything. minute to minute he changes his mind. he completely contradicts himself constantly. and he doesn’t care.
there is no policy argument to be made in his favor because it’s impossible to know what his policies would be like. he doesn’t know how the government works and his statements are ever-changing and frequently literally nonsensical.
Clinton’s corruption? for all the moaning about the Clinton foundation, has anyone ever asked Trump if his immediate family will step aside from his businesses ? because if you think there’s a conflict of interest in running a charity, take a look at what Trump has his fingers in and imagine how you would feel if those were Clinton’s fingers, instead.
he has a long record of campaign finance abuse – even before this Bondi thing. he’s a fraudster. he doesn’t pay his employees or contractors. he doesn’t even pay the troupe of little girls who came to sing that jingoist nonsense at his rallies! he uses illegal immigrants (not just models, but in the construction and running of his hotels).
don’t like Clinton? fine. i’m not crazy about her, either – never have been. but she is at least sane. Trump is the antithesis of what anyone should want in a President. there is nothing about Trump that recommends him for the job.
so, no, i don’t understand how anyone could dislike Clinton that much.
Faced with the awful choice, I would vote for GWB over Trump.
Me too. Hell, I did. Twice. Doesn’t mean others would see it that way.
Try again.
Ok: Cheney v Trump. Cruz v Trump. Palin v Trump. There’s plenty to work with, I can go on all day.
I have always registered as independent, but identified as a Republican. However, in all the little tests of who you agree with I come out with a Libertarian score.
Sorry short answer.
I find nothing irrational about my loathing and contempt for GWB: His theft the presidency from Al Gore; His tax cuts for the rich; starting unjustified and costly wars based on known lies; turning a blind eye to, if not outright sanctioning of torture; appointing conservative hacks to the Supreme Court; his brazen attempt to privatize social security; his inept executive appointments….I could go on, but I’m sure you get the idea.
On the other hand, all the sniping about Clinton from the right is about (a.) a charitable foundation (b.) emails; or (not so much these days) Benghazi.
Notice any difference?
Cheney/HRC is a better example of how left mirrors right and vice versa.
That I might be able to go with. I would be at a complete loss in a Cheney v. Trump election. Stay home. Vote 3rd party. Move to Canada. Take your pick.
Not that it says anything about how well-informed and carefully considered my opinions are as compared to people who dislike HRC with the same fervor I do Cheney. Some people believe vaccines cause Autism with the same confidence that I have in the theory of evolution. What does that say about how each of us form opinions relative to one another?
I would also note that, among my larger circle of friends, I have a good number of Trump supporters, some or most of whom are so by virtue of their contempt of Clinton. I don’t necessarily think they’re mentally deficient. I just think they’ve bought into far more of the anti-Clinton narrative than I have for whatever reasons, or they’ve bought into the narrative that the country is falling apart around them and soon to be headed off a cliff, making Trump worth a shot even if only to upset the apple cart and establish an unspecified but hopefully better normal.
I don’t understand it, but also I know they aren’t all crazy idiots. It’s vexing, to be sure.
what about her foreign policy views makes her a Republican?
None “make” her a Rethuglican, but her policy preferences toward Israel are virtually indistinguishable from just about any prominent GOP foreign policy expert you could name.
Hey Donald J.,
Juan Cole is just about always good on what is going on in the ME. That was a good read. Alas, I don’t read him as often as I should. Has he ever climbed down from his cheerleading for the Libyan intervention fiasco?
but her policy preferences toward Israel are virtually indistinguishable from just about any prominent GOP foreign policy expert you could name.
how does Israel feel about the Iran deal ?
Ok: Cheney v Trump. Cruz v Trump. Palin v Trump. There’s plenty to work with, I can go on all day.
Let’s put aside whether or not I’m more right to dislike those Trump opponents than people are to dislike HRC to the same degree. In all of those cases, I would probably be in the same position that you and Marty are in now. I wouldn’t be voting for Trump or his main opponent.
So are you attempting to compare me to people who are voting for Trump because they hate Clinton so much, or are you attempting to compare me to people who just refuse to vote for either one of them?
I mean, this whole exercise is very silly, but I’m curious (and silly) enough to want to know.
I find nothing irrational about my loathing and contempt for GWB: His theft the presidency from Al Gore; His tax cuts for the rich; starting unjustified and costly wars based on known lies; turning a blind eye to, if not outright sanctioning of torture; appointing conservative hacks to the Supreme Court; his brazen attempt to privatize social security; his inept executive appointments….I could go on, but I’m sure you get the idea.
Sure I do, given your viewpoint. Which is *yours* and not universal. For example, I’m pretty sure the tax cuts were across the board and were passed by congress. The election was “stolen” only in the minds of left wing partisans. Every media recount showed Bush winning. If Gore had won by 10 votes, would it have been theft? Please. I’m pretty sure the decision to go to war was widely debated and was approved by congress. I’m pretty sure the “known lies” were not “known” by Bush at the time given the record of his communications with Tenet. I give you a check in the torture box and conservative hacks vs liberal or progressive hacks is a matter of preference, not evil. As for social security, making a policy proposal is what presidents do. You may, and obviously do, find the idea to be a bad one. That you are awash in hyperbolic adjectives speaks more to your partisanship than it does to objective reality and it makes my point.
As for HRC, you minimize her and her husband’s record in the same way a right wing partisan would minimize GWB’s. Again, making my point.
So are you attempting to compare me to people who are voting for Trump because they hate Clinton so much, or are you attempting to compare me to people who just refuse to vote for either one of them?
I mean, this whole exercise is very silly, but I’m curious (and silly) enough to want to know.
Because you said “try again”. So, I did.
Other than that, I made the point that some, likely statistically significant number of Trump supporters are less fans of Trump’s than they are enemies of HRC. The subsidiary point is that, depending on point of view, voting for either as the lesser of two evils is perfectly rationale. I’m doing neither but I get both sides’ arguments.
But you seemed to be making some kind of partisanship-based argument that HRC supporters are necessarily as biased as some other group of people on the other side of the spectrum, as though you’re somehow the arbiter of objectivity (because you’re not voting for Clinton or Trump?).
It sounded like you were proposing that two people who believed different things with the same steadfastness must be mirror images of each other in terms of bias, as though it doesn’t matter what those beliefs are or why they are held. “People on the left hate whoever as much as people on the right hate Clinton, so it’s the same thing” seemed to be the thrust of it.
the Libyan intervention fiasco?
Please describe how the Libyan intervention was a fiasco.
1. Extensive human rights violations were occurring and massive ones were threatened.
2. The United States had the support of the international community, including a resolution by the Security Council.
3. France led the intervention, with the US supporting with air power.
4. The object was not to create a peaceful, democratic Middle Eastern state (we don’t do “nation-building” anymore for reasons), but to stop the Libyan government from using its huge military capacity to bomb rebel states (a situation similar to Syria).
5. The final batch of chemical weapon materials from strife-torn Libya has arrived in Germany to be destroyed.
6. ISIL is pretty much gone now.
7. The country still has violence and needs to get its act together, but that’s (in our current national thinking) up to them. And they don’t have an entrenched dictator.
What was wrong with the invasion again?
But you seemed to be making some kind of partisanship-based argument that HRC supporters are necessarily as biased as some other group of people on the other side of the spectrum, as though you’re somehow the arbiter of objectivity (because you’re not voting for Clinton or Trump?).
If I’m not the arbiter, I probably should be.
Well, perhaps not.
But, if I said what you said, that would be mind reading. Your 4:11 comes pretty close to what I’ve been trying to say. Also, I’m trying to say that partisanship necessarily colors judgment and that, in the case of Trump (although probably in HRC’s case too, but perhaps not to the same degree), many supporters are more anti-HRC than they are pro-Trump. I made this point only because it seems common here to assert that *all* Trump supporters line up behind his views. I don’t think that is the case.
Every media recount showed Bush winning.
No. They do not.
No. “Passage by Congress” does not absolve GWB of his terrible policies.
No. The tax cuts were heavily weighted to favor the rich.
No. The known lies were pretty well known at the time.
No. Conservative hacks on the Court make bad rulings, but apparently your disagreement with, say, the ever so liberal Warren Court’s rulings is based on high principle, but my contempt for hackery like Shelby County is scoffed at as partisanship.
No big deal here. If that makes me a partisan, I shall proudly wear that label.
I hear Texas may be in play this year.
Thanks for sitting this one out.
I made this point only because it seems common here to assert that *all* Trump supporters line up behind his views. I don’t think that is the case.
All Trump supporters own his views, however, and are responsible for what he does if elected. A plea of “but Hillary!” is going to be worth exactly nothing.
The subsidiary point is that…voting for either as the lesser of two evils is perfectly rationale.
Nice Dan Quayle there, tex! But yes, agree.
Under current rules, there’s no getting around the two party duopoly.
because the reality of the situation is that, policy-wise and temperamentally, Clinton is a completely standard American politician. while Trump is literally an authoritarian strong-man who knows nothing about the law, the Constitution, how government works, the limits of executive power, the economy, foreign policy, the judiciary… you name it, he don’t know it. and he doesn’t care that he doesn’t know it
This, and everything else in cleek’s 04.01.
All Trump supporters own his views, however, and are responsible for what he does if elected. A plea of “but Hillary!” is going to be worth exactly nothing.
Ok. Does Donald own Obama’s drone strikes or Libyan intervention? Does HRC own Iraq? Do you, as her supporter?
Libyan intervention
Care to read my comment about that? Should I also defend drone strikes again? As a supporter of Hillary Clinton, I believe (as she does – and as she owns) that her Iraq vote was a mistake. (And she voted for it, not because she supported the Bush policy, but because she wanted to give the president military authority as diplomatic leverage. But we’ve had this argument before too.)
That’s what I own, and I’m proud to own it.
This, and everything else in cleek’s 04.01.
Indeed, yes. That was a good one.
cleek’s 4:01 on 9/8 gets a second from me.
You don’t have to love HRC to despise the idea of Trump. On what issue does he make sense?
So, thank you, folks, for not supporting the fascist. Good for us, right?
And not to diminish your huge sacrifice in holding your nose for Clinton, but I think she’s actually good. Really good. Very “progressive”.
Y’all need to figure out how to win in the face of the “Goring” of Clinton. I find myself, yet again, dismayed.
sapient,
just tell her to stay away from earth tones.
it will be ok.
If it makes you feel any better sapient, I’m guessing almost everyone here who intends to vote for Clinton doesn’t buy the “Goring,” by which I assume you mean something along the lines of “the Clinton Rules” of the (so-called liberal) media and the witch-hunts of the GOP over the last quarter of a century.
Certainly, you can disagree with the policy problems people have with Clinton, but policy problems aren’t the same thing as “Goring.”
On the whole, I think she’d be at least a reasonably good president as measured by realistic historical standards, even if more hawkish and corporatist than I’d like.
The eyes of Texas are upon you, you cannot get away!
“but because she wanted to give the president military authority as diplomatic leverage”
underneath it all, this is one reason why I hate Hillary. She lies, constantly, sometimes for no reason. Although often for good reason. She voted for it, she supported the policy, she thinks it was a mistake, end of story. But no, she just adds an obvious bs lie because she just cant help herself.
If her lips are moving she lying or going to lie.
That’s some good ol’ non-partisan input right there.
McK, out of curiosity, have you queried the Trump supporters you know on what they would be doing if Bernie Sanders had won the nomination? Or, alternatively, is there *anything* Trump could say or do or be shown to have done that would prevent them from voting for him? Sounds like they’re people who would support the Republican nominee come hell or high water.
If her lips are moving she lying or going to lie.
Umm, her statement at the time.
In case you have missed everything about this election cycle, your last statement in the 4:01
was answered in your first paragraph
While not actually true, it is a large reason that she is disliked so widely. A large portion of Trump followers hate McConnell and Ryan for the same reason.
Ouch! I blame Obama!
McK, out of curiosity, have you queried the Trump supporters you know on what they would be doing if Bernie Sanders had won the nomination?
Have not. Hadn’t thought to do so, and usually, the thrust of the conversation, these days, doesn’t move that way. Cross examining people–Trumpets or HRC’s fans–on any part of their views is not well received by most folks and since the context is almost always social, I stay with sports and my own position which is as I’ve previously stated.
Or, alternatively, is there *anything* Trump could say or do or be shown to have done that would prevent them from voting for him? Sounds like they’re people who would support the Republican nominee come hell or high water.
Fair question. When Trump went after the Muslim parents of the slain soldier, that cost him with some folks I know who had previously been in his camp. Whether their feelings for HRC will push them back into voting against her is anyone’s guess. I assume some Trumpets won’t change no matter what and that there are those on the left who wouldn’t change no matter what comes out in the next couple of email releases.
And, I agree with Marty. HRC lies all the time. Been doing it for years. So does her husband. But, that won’t change any minds here, so there’s no point in going back and forth over that.
When looking at the polling numbers for Johnson, I console myself by thinking that a significant number of those people are GOP-leaning Never Clinton types who are also Never Trump types. I know a few of those. It would take some serious desperation for them to choose to vote for Clinton.
Fortunately for us all, those people (at least the ones with which I have spoken) are also largely pragmatists and would shift their vote from Johnson to HRC if the polls started looking like Trump might win their state/district.
I’m hearing the same thing from the Dem side. The third party voting is largely a product of them feeling like they have the luxury of throwing a vote to Johnson/Stein because of the margin in their state/district as well. Too close and that calculus changes.
Just gotta hope that their calculus takes into account both low turn out and polling margins of error or we could be looking at the same phenomenon that led to Brexit (which should be the rallying cry for this, rather than the constant references to Nader).
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/stephen-zunes-on-hillary-clintons-record-on-foreign-policy
Clinton’s foreign policy seems Republican to me because she’s been a fairly consistent saber rattling militarist inclined to use overheated rhetoric and demonization about groups she seems to see as evil, one of which I support– the BDS movement, which she equates with antisemitism and I in return say this makes her a fracking bigot. You can oppose BDS for various reasons, but to equate it with antisemitism is spitting in the face of Palestinians who think they have the right to use standard nonviolent methods to fight for their rights. I could say more about this, but will move on.
If you read the Juan Cole link I provided earlier she said several stupid things. She seems not to know we have ground troops in Iraq. She lumped Hamas with Iran, which is outdated. Her whole spiel on Iran and its allies seems like classic demonizing and not serious analysis. Her eagerness to plunge more deeply into supplying weapon to rebels seems oddly shortsighted since th rebels we support fight literally side by side with al Qaeda.
As for the Iraq vote, her supporters have been diligently rewriting the history, but if you read the Zunes piece above you will see how silly this is. Democrats spent the 00’s talking about Bush’s war as the worst mistake in US foreign policy history o as more than that– an actual crime. Clinton was as strong a supporter of it as you can find.
She’s better than Trump. That’s her main virtue on FP.
For me, global warming is the biggest issue and there is at least a chance we might do something with Democrats in office. So that, um, trumps everything.
So, it’s the lying by Clinton that they hate, and the truth-telling by Trump that turns them off?
I thought what we do around here is a “sport”.
When people mention Brexit, my mind always goes to the fact that a pro-Remain politician was assassinated and Leave still won.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-politics-of-murder-in-britain
I know that there is this political blog conversation thing where, if you call out the Leave campaign for being racist, you somehow are not granting the people on that side credit for the rational points of their view. But if you reach a point where an assassination doesn’t have people step back a bit, you have to wonder.
I forgot to rant about Yemen, but have an errand to run. Maybe later.
Maybe later.
Hope you address the Iran deal!!!!
I thought what we do around here is a “sport”.
nah…we’re just looking for hills to defend and/or die on…somehow we always find them. their numbers must be yyyoouuuuuggge.
The completely standard self-interested American people have no problem with completely standard lying American politicians.
Let’s review: Walter Mondale told the truth about the need for and his intention to raise taxes in 1984 and the guy who swore he would never raise taxes, during the campaign, what’s his face, did just that, the liar, after, if not before, crushing Mondale for a second term.
Move forward to George Bush Senior, who through motionless, unreadable lips lied that he would never raise taxes, only to be set upon by his own Gingrich aficionados once he told the truth and raised taxes, even to the extent of helping him to lose to Bill Clinton, who told the truth about raising marginal rates and did exactly that once elected.
Spare us this myth about the American people.
From the looks of the violence at Trump rallies, I’d say many if not most of his supporters claim ownership of his views, even the ones Trump has taken three sides of, if in fact he knows what his views are from minute to minute.
He’s a completely standard American asshole and so are most of his supporters.
In conclusion, because this thread is a hall of mirrors, not voting for either Clinton or Trump, and going for Johnson, et al, or what’s her sh*tface, is a way of escaping ownership IMHO and calling it integrity.
In further conclusion, because like with principles, I have more than one, arguing partisanly with MCTX and Marty is a little like this friend I had in college who when hanging with us while we dropped acid (just a few times; so leave it alone) was always asking “What’s so funny?” or “Yeah, it’s a stoplight, get over it” to the rest of us.
Slart too to some extent: “Issues are just hills to win” or whatever. It’s like a woman with beautiful legs wearing a sundress in a stiff breeze. “Hey, get over it, boys,” she might protest, “they are just legs.”
Yeah, we know what they are, which is why they caught our attention.
We need some real Republican partisans around here to argue with, like in the old days.
The friend in college, in case it wasn’t understood, had not dropped acid.
Speaking of assassinations, and lj is on to something there, when did killing someone over politics ever change anyone’s mind about an issue?
Heck, if Abraham Lincoln was around today, he’d have to be shot again, this time by a Republican who wished he would stop telling the truth about the limits of states rights.
Same with Jesus.
Same with Martin Luther King.
Same with Peter Pumpkinhead.
It’s the truth-tellers who get the bullet, not your run-of-the-mill liars.
Because the “people” know what they like, and it ain’t the truth.
“The friend in college, in case it wasn’t understood, had not dropped acid.”
That was clear from the questions.
The friend in college, in case it wasn’t understood, had not dropped acid.
That should be obvious, unless you’re like that guy … in the not-dropping-acid department, that is.
McTX: I’m pretty sure the decision to go to war was widely debated and was approved by congress.
Dubya his own self:
The emphasis is mine, to wake McKinney up. To be sure, it’s quite possible that the Senators and Congressmen, including Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorize but not (according to Dubya) require military force against Saddam knew perfectly well that Dick and Dubya’s Excellent Adventure was already a forgone conclusion — which is to say they knew Dubya was lying in that speech. That is what you need to believe in order to despise Hillary as much as I despised Dubya.
Marty: If her lips are moving she lying or going to lie.
When HRC says He, Trump is unfit to be POTUS, is she lying?
–TP
In case you have missed everything about this election cycle, your last statement in the 4:01 …
Clinton is a completely standard American politician…
etc
Kevin Drum, among others, has been pretty skeptical of this narrative, and has been trying to see if there’s any evidence to support it. and it turns out that polling says there actually is not actually any great wave of “throw them all out”. polling says anti-establishment feeling is pretty much the same as it always is.
so, no, i don’t buy that at all.
i know it’s what everybody has to say right now – “people are fed up with politics as usual!” but they always say that. but as with a lot of things everybody has to say about politics these days, there’s no data to back it up.
more likely, the alpha-male, TV celebrity, tough-guy bullshit artist did well because the dozen-plus interchangeable (and therefore vote-splitting) standard-issue Republicans couldn’t thin themselves out fast enough. that left him with a plurality. and at the same time, a bunch of young people and libertarian-leaning people on the left liked a guy who has spent the last 30-years in Congress but lost, hard, to the establishment candidate (who has been the target of decades of utterly nonsensical bullshit from the press).
so, again: no.
unless you have data to back that up, i’m sticking with : it’s a bullshit narrative that people are sticking with because it makes things seem exciting.
Marty: If her lips are moving she lying or going to lie.
Trump lied about his own identity, repeatedly. he admitted this. he lies about everything, always, constantly.
he is a tax cheat, a thief, a philanderer, a fraud, a scam-artist, and a serial liar.
enumerate every lie Clinton has even been accused of by any Republican ever and Trump will beat that total every speech he gives. not just standard politician rhetorical truth-massaging, but outright, verifiable, do-you-belive-me-or-your-own-lying-eyes lies. he lies about things he has said in front of cameras. he repeats lies he knows have been disproven.
there is simply no equivalency between the two.
“people are fed up with politics as usual!” but they always say that…
Yep. When I hear somebody make that assertion my bullshit antannae (as?..help me out here Dan Q.)go up, because most likely I am in the presence of somebody who has lots of opinions, but nothing to back them up.
On Yemen, stealing from the Juan Cole article, one of the things Clinton said was this–
“What I am focused on is all the other malicious activities of the Iranians — ballistic missiles, support for terrorists, being involved in Syria, Yemen, and other places, supporting Hezbollah, Hamas.”
As Cole pointed out, this is nonsense on stilts. Iran is barely doing anything in Yemen. It’s our pals the Saudis who are intervening there. Clinton is essentially repeating the lies of her pals the Saudis. Which brings up another point. We hear a lot about the love affair between Putin and Trump and Clinton expresses shock, shock I tell you, that Trump is so friendly with a dictator, yet there the Saudis are, asking us to help them commit war crimes in Yemen because of the Iran deal and we dutifully help them do it. And what does our great foreign policy expert say to the public? Well, she repeats Saudi propaganda.
If we had real coverage of our politicians from our worthless journalistic airheads they’d ask Trump about pandering to Putin (I think they do that already) and they’d ask Hillary about her pandering to the Saudis.
On the AUMF, here is Clinton on December 15, 2003–
“Turning to Iraq, yesterday was a good day. I was thrilled that Saddam Hussein had finally been captured. Like many of you, I was glued to the television and the radio as I went about my daily business. We owe a great debt of gratitude to our troops, to the president, to our intelligence services, to all who had a hand in apprehending Saddam. Now he will be brought to justice, and we hope that the prospects for peace and stability in Iraq will improve.
I was especially pleased that the capture was led by the 4th Infantry Division, whom I visited in Kirkuk and had a a briefing from the commander, General Odierno, and during that briefing was given some insights into the efforts to apprehend Saddam. And it’s very good news indeed that they have come to fruition.
This moment, however, cannot be just about congratulating ourselves and the Iraqi people for this capture. It should be a moment where we step back and consider how now to go forward. What is it we can do today, based on the circumstances of yesterday, that will strengthen our hand and move the Iraqis closer to a time when they can have self-government and create a stable, free, democratic Iraq?
I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein. I believe that that was the right vote. I have had many disputes and disagreements with the administration over how that authority has been used, but I stand by the vote to provide the authority because I think it was a necessary step in order to maximize the outcome that did occur in the Security Council with the unanimous vote to send in inspectors. And I also knew that our military forces would be successful. But what we did not appreciate fully and what the administration was unprepared for was what would happen the day after.”
Her criticism of Bush in the prewar debates was over the question of allies–she wanted as many as possible, while Bush seemed willing to go it alone. But otherwise she was right there with him. She also used all the Bush arguments for war, including that Saddam had given sanctuary to al Qaeda. She was told that the arguments were weak, based on faulty evidence, but she spoke as though they were certain.
As for not appreciating fully what would happen after the initial invasion, there were plenty of warnings about that.
And I don’t know what Matt Y is saying about Clinton these days, when the need is to whitewash her record, but some years back he wrote this–
“https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/feb/12/hillaryclintonshistorylesso1
Link failed. Try again–
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/feb/12/hillaryclintonshistorylesso1
Trump has repeatedly publicly claimed that President Obama was not born in this country, that he isn’t a legitimate president, and that Trump had paid investigators who had found evidence of all this. He has never apologized or retracted any of these statements. He did this, obviously, to court the large fraction of this country that is deeply racist and wishes to believe that the first black president is illegitimate.
Trump has repeatedly said that he would order our soldiers to torture and to kill the innocent families of terrorists. He has never apologized or retracted this.
Trump was for the Iraq war:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/in-2002-donald-trump-said-he-supported-invading-iraq-on-the
Trump was for Libya:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/trump-claims-he-didnt-support-libya-intervention-but-he-did
There is literally no issue where Trump is better than Clinton. Not one. If you can find a single decision Clinton has made where she caused more net harm than Trump actually has, that is because thus far in life Trump has been blessedly far from the levers of power.
If you’re considering voting for someone other than Clinton, you are helping Trump.
Why would you help him?
but Clinton is a Clinton, and a *gasp* Democrat. does McTx lecture his Trumpian friends about the evils of partisanship?
oh, hey, look, WaPo woke the fnck up:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-hillary-clinton-email-story-is-out-of-control/2016/09/08/692947d0-75fc-11e6-8149-b8d05321db62_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-f%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.d842a806b68f
I’d point out that Iran occupies a special place in terms of enemies of the US in the minds of many. For example, Millenium Challenge, the US wargame in 2002, had a fictional middle east enemy that was probably conceived to be Iran. To make matters worse, the enemy Red team, led by General Paul K. Van Riper ‘won’, forcing the military to do a restart with new rules that ensured the US Blue team won.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
I imagine that a number of people in the military viewed van Riper’s “victory” that was made into a defeat as validating concerns about Iran, and that because they could threaten the US, it continues to be necessary to take whatever steps necessary to cripple them (there is a similar mindset regarding China) The US also has biannual wargames with Israel, with the projected enemy being Iran. You also have stuxnet, nuclear espionage, executed spies. You also have the January prisoner exchange that had Republicans accusing Obama of treason and reports of Republican candidates meddling in the negotiations.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gop-presidential-candidates-say-iran-prisoner-swap-makes-us-look-weak/2016/01/16/8f0faf06-bc71-11e5-99f3-184bc379b12d_story.html
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/02/iran-us-prisoner-swap-rezaian-hekmati-shamkhani.html
Given this kind of background, it would take a truly revolutionary figure to reset the relationship with Iran. GIven that Hillary is the first major party female presidential candidate, to wish for her to be that revolutionary is pretty difficult to imagine.
Agree with Sig’s 06.36, even the last 2 paragraphs. I cannot myself see, even if you dislike or despise HRC, how she isn’t miles better than Trump (despite all McKinney’s and Marty’s comments to the contrary). As I recall, NV used to put up a principled and spirited rationale for why not supporting Clinton was not the same as helping Trump, but I was never convinced. Especially given Trump’s dark hints about what will happen if he is beaten, I would have thought it is absolutely necessary that the popular vote shows him as being completely and decisively crushed: and that means every non-vote for either of them is one which fails to assert America’s rejection of authoritarianism, white supremacy, anti-semitism, misogyny etc etc ad infinitum.
Today’s xkcd is just so perfect for politics….
http://xkcd.com/1731/
Sig, was that directed at me? Lesser of two evils for me means voting Clinton. But her foreign policy record is awful and that doesn’t change because of how terrible Trump is.
I have also become even more disgusted with mainstream Democrats and our wonderful liberal press corps than I already was. In no sane society would people rant about the sheer awfulness of the Iraq War and then choose as their leader with her wonderful foreign policy experience a Democrat closely associated with it. And the defense given by supporters– she was fooled by Bush. Not plausible at all, but if true she’s an idiot. Literally the only worse choice on the Democratic side would have been Lieberman and he’s not a Democrat anymore.
I mentioned Matt Y upthread and wondered what he was writing about Clinton these days. According to Matt Taibbi, this sort of thing–
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/why-matt-yglesias-should-unwrite-his-latest-column-w438718
It was pretty clear that GWB, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al. were Jonesing for a war with Saddam and were willing to believe anything that supported their position, no matter how ludicrous and discredited, and disbelieve or discount anything that contradicted their desire. “We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” Indeed.
The clincher is that the weapons inspectors spent months in country and found jack sh1t. Bush et. al. told them to GTFO and invaded anyway.
Also, if I can ask Marty and McTx, what it is you believe Clinton will do in office that will be horrible in terms of actual public policy (i.e., “lying all the time” doesn’t count)?
…the Iraq War and then choose as their leader with her wonderful foreign policy experience a Democrat closely associated with it.
“closely associated with it” ??
that seems overstated.
she was a Junior Senator from the state where the Twin Towers fell; and who, along with 76 other Senators, voted for the AUMF-Iraq bill. she had nothing to do with the planning or execution of the war. she didn’t fake the evidence. she didn’t lead the country on a months-long BS sales job.
In no sane society would people rant about the sheer awfulness of the Iraq War and then choose as their leader with her wonderful foreign policy experience a Democrat closely associated with it.
At the moment, we have two choices. Someone who supported the Iraq war at the beginning, but now believes it was a mistake. Or someone who supported the Iraq war at the beginning, but now claims that he did not.
In brief, we can choose someone who will admit to making a mistake and attempts to learn from it. Or someone who refuses to admit a mistake, and when an error is pointed out (on this subject or others) either insists that he did not do/say what he clearly did, or doubles down and insists that something that is objectively false is really true.
Sure, we can decide “a pox on both their houses” and vote for a third party candidate. I may do that myself. But the reality is that, this election, we are going to end up with one of those two candidates.
I may do that myself.
I hope only because you’re in CA and your vote won’t really matter.
Trump has said he will tell the US military to commit war crimes. “conservatives” support him.
Trump praises Putin for his ‘strength’. “conservatives” support him.
Trump on Kim Jung-un:
Trump, in 1990, talking about Russia and Tiannamen square.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/432043/donald-trump-praised-tiananmen-square-massacre
“conservatives” think he’s A-OK. $90M worth of A-OK last month.
the guy is obsessed with “strength” and gets tumescent at the idea of state power stomping its own citizens.
but Clinton is a Democrat so “conservatives” couldn’t possibly vote for her.
Here are the courageous GOP Senators on Donald Trump’s performance on Russian TV last night. I guess they didn’t get the memo that Trump was “tricked”?
I hope only because you’re in CA and your vote won’t really matter.
It’s nice, in a way, to have that luxury. Makes up, a little bit, for not having a significant vote.
The main argument against that I see is this: it would be best if Trump not only loses, but loses BIG. He and his partisans will probably refuse to believe the results anyway. But a huge loss (especially if it also takes out some folks down ballot) would increase the chances of the GOP finally getting serious about purging itself of the nut cases.
The question then becomes, would it be sufficient for Trump’s percentage of the vote to be low? Or would it be necessary, in order to get the point across, for his margin of loss compared to Clinton to be large? Still wrestling with that.
it’s a risk not worth taking, IMO.
Donald,
For me, global warming is the biggest issue and there is at least a chance we might do something with Democrats in office. So that, um, trumps everything.
It is a massively important issue, and seems to have been utterly ignored by the press.
Honest journalism would discuss the problem and point out the Republican response: That it’s all a hoax, and it would emphasize Trump’s stated opinion that the hoax is being perpetrated by the Chinese to destroy US manufacturing.
That in itself ought to be enough to convince any rational person that voting for Trump -or Republicans in general – is insane and likely to be destructive to the country and the world.
Of course there’s more. Taxes, foreign policy, etc., but climate change is dispositive.
Trump ain’t gonna lose big.
“But a huge loss (especially if it also takes out some folks down ballot) would increase the chances of the GOP finally getting serious about purging itself of the nut cases.”
The Republican Party is nearly done with the 40-year program of completely and purposefully purging itself of the sane ones, so a purge the other way, which they have no intention of undertaking (they could use an undertaker) starts with this score: Nutcases — 100 million, Sane Remnant — 0.
I want to apologize to sane ones-in-exile Marty, McTX, Slart, and whomever else here picks up their OBWI phone and hears our voices say “I see by your caller ID that we’re talking to Donald Trump”, and feels obligated, since they think we’re calling them, to point out to us how Clinton and Trump are bookends of a different horse’s ass while they’ve got us on the line, when all we really want to express is how Trump is beyond the pale, far beyond any awful pale Clinton can possibly aspire to. Her lips don’t stand a chance when compared to (I almost wrote “up against”, which would not have conjured a pretty picture) Trump’s entire bullshit alimentary canal, from snout to tail.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/12/the-poughkeepsie-retiree-with-trumps-phone-number
I don’t understand how their caller ID got swiped by Donald Trump (so that when we howl the words Donald Trump they answer like coyotes on the far ridge — “yeah, but Hillary Clinton”) but in the bizarro, unending nightmare we are living through in our marvelous and malignantly manipulated high-tech world, there is apparently nothing that can be done about it, and nightmarishly, as the article cites, there are an increasing many in their boat.
I can’t prove it, but I suspect Trump’s genius Russian hackers are behind the caller ID fuckup and once he is elected ALL of our cell phones, landlines, and internet browsers will be ID’d as “Donald Trump” and we will be driven to dousing ourselves in gasoline and throwing a match just to get it to stop.
How come no one wants to see transcripts of Clinton’s phone calls? Why just emails?
I’d be interested too in the content of the love notes she passed on in second grade to the boys in her class. And her girlfriends, especially those.
I’d like to see transcripts of her private inner thoughts as well. Can we plant a device in her brain to alert us to what she’s thinking.
I’d ask for Trump’s too but there aren’t any thoughts to transcribe.
Here’s my extravagant view of the stakes in the global warming debate. No need to say thank you.
If I’m wrong in holding that the vast scientific majority opinion that global temperatures are in fact warming and man’s carbon footprint has much to do with it, and that dire events will result, as honest, correct and not a hoax, and further that our national government should be fully funding efforts to ameliorate the effects and damage and perhaps even reverse the trend, if that’s at all possible, instead of, as the Republican Party seeks to do, even with the Defense Department budget, cut every cheapass line item in the budget that funds these efforts (on behalf of their fuck lying Koch lobbyists), then bill me for the tiny amounts thus far expended if I’m mistaken.
You can tie me to post and whip me too if that would be satisfying.
On the other hand, if the science is anywhere near right and damage continues to mount and the deniers (a hoax? fuck off!) are wrong but still persist in not allowing this country, and the world, to address what needs to be done on a national basis, the deniers and their paymasters will be f*cking killed, and I mean fucking butchered. They’ll be torn to pieces worldwide and fed to the alligators sloshing around in Rush Limbaugh’s flooded basement, and grim satisfaction will be taken that their malignity in all things besides global warming is also being punished.
You’re welcome.
does McTx lecture his Trumpian friends about the evils of partisanship?
Lecture? Moi? I inform. I reason. Gently.
But, yes, I do. Do you?
and that means every non-vote for either of them is one which fails to assert America’s rejection of authoritarianism, white supremacy, anti-semitism, misogyny etc etc ad infinitum.
I get that going the other way, as well. I take your point. In TX, it’s likely that a non-vote is a vote for HRC, not Trump. I staked my position out back when Cruz was still theoretically in the mix and I said then, I would not support either party’s candidate. I’m sticking with that.
Also, if I can ask Marty and McTx, what it is you believe Clinton will do in office that will be horrible in terms of actual public policy (i.e., “lying all the time” doesn’t count)?
Fair question. I think she’ll continue bankrupting the country with more and more debt. She’ll initiate new programs without ending old ones. Like every other Democrat, every single penny of spending is sacrosanct except for national defense/security. She’ll raise taxes even further. She will continue the regulatory regime that Obama has sponsored, which dampens the economy even further. She will continue the concentration of power in the executive through aggressive rule making and guidance. ACA will be allowed to stumble along. I won’t like her judicial appointments.
None of these are good enough reasons to vote for Trump, but it’s why I’m a conservative and not a modern liberal.
A point I make to Trump supporters is that their candidate is truly an irrational wild card. If he performs in office as his words indicate will be the case, the pressure to impeach him will be overwhelming. He will not serve a full term. Republicans will have to cross the aisle and oust him. This could produce a viable middle ground movement in the country, which I would welcome. However the more likely outcome will be that the damage done to the conservative brand I favor will be, if not permanent, very close to it.
The current iteration of the Republican Party is particularly noteworthy for its dearth of qualified presidential candidates. The modern GOP is douche-baggery on steroids. In time, Romney will be seen as the last actually ‘presidential’ candidate the GOP has fielded.
I think she’ll continue bankrupting the country with more and more debt. …She’ll raise taxes even further.
You would cut the deficit through spending cuts alone?
there’s always the good ol perennial magical piggy-bank of Waste, Fraud and Abuse!
“The current iteration of the Republican Party is particularly noteworthy for its dearth of qualified presidential candidates. The modern GOP is douche-baggery on steroids. In time, Romney will be seen as the last actually ‘presidential’ candidate the GOP has fielded.”
I, for one, can take yes for an answer and will shut up for the remainder of this thread.
I, for one, can take yes for an answer and will shut up for the remainder of this thread.
Whereas I don’t think it’s enough to sit back and watch my state go for a fascist. I would work for his defeat, even despite my fear of having to pay a few more dollars in federal taxes.
You would cut the deficit through spending cuts alone?
I would freeze federal spending at current levels and hiring too. I would keep that freeze in effect for two years minimum. Congress would be free to reallocate monies within the capped budget.
I would lower the corp tax rate and simultaneously hammer down on the ability to shift income offshore.
Once that was accomplished, I reassess what to do on taxes.
She will continue the regulatory regime that Obama has sponsored, which dampens the economy even further.
oh that poor damp economy.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/wells-fargo-to-pay-185-million-fine-over-account-openings-1473352548
But, cleek, we pay for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with taxes! Freeze hiring there!
If this is what bankruptcy looks like, sign me up. Those are some sweet rates.
i’m sure Clinton will drive us into bankruptcy much faster than the guy who has already had his businesses go through at least four bankruptcies.
But, cleek, we pay for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with taxes! Freeze hiring there!
The CFPB didn’t discover this. That was done in a law suit in LA. WF fired 5200 employees in the course of investigating this discovery. WF also paid damages before the CFPB ever got involved.
So, this is not a case of our beloved bureaucracy protecting us from evil banks. Using existing laws and existing processes, the situation was identified and addressed.
What a lot of employees did was not company policy and if you dig down into what WF did and how they’ve addressed it–all without apparent guidance from the feds–their approach has been fairly impressive.
McKinney,
I think she’ll continue bankrupting the country with more and more debt.
OK. You think the country is in danger of bankruptcy (it’s not close, IMO) Has there been any Republican Presidential candidate since 1980, including primary candidates, who didn’t vow to cut taxes, thereby making matters worse, not better? Do you think Trump’s fiscal plans, or Gary Johnson’s, would lead to fiscal soundness. They wouldn’t.
She’ll initiate new programs without ending old ones.
Maybe, maybe not. Of course that’s not necessarily bad, depending on the programs in question.
Like every other Democrat, every single penny of spending is sacrosanct except for national defense/security. She’ll raise taxes even further.
What major categories of spending would you like to see cut? As for taxes, yes she is proposing some increases. Frankly, if Mitt Romney ends up paying 20% of his income in taxes rather than 15% I’m far from offended. The fact is the tax code has been heavily tilted in favor of the extremely wealthy for a long time, and the GOP – not just Trump – wants to make this worse. A small course reversal is not such a bad idea. Besides, concern about the deficit doesn’t sit comfortably with opposition to any tax increase.
She will continue the regulatory regime that Obama has sponsored, which dampens the economy even further.
Examples of counterproductive Obama regulations, please.
She will continue the concentration of power in the executive through aggressive rule making and guidance.
Probably. That’s what Presidents tend to do.
ACA will be allowed to stumble along.
There are things in ACA that can be improved, no doubt. But tell me how you propose to improve them when the GOP Congress refuses to engage in any discussion of possible modifications? If you want improvements look to the Republicans.
I won’t like her judicial appointments.
Fair enough.
What a lot of employees did was not company policy and if you dig down into what WF did and how they’ve addressed it–all without apparent guidance from the feds–their approach has been fairly impressive.
You may have been impressed, but the CFPB fined them $100 million. When thousands of employees are engaging in an illegal practice, you kind of have to wonder whether it really wasn’t “company policy”. They all just came up with that when out having lunch?
There is the question of an internal control failure.
McKinney @ 11:47 or so above:
Please explain to the peanut gallery how all these so-called nightmarish things could come to pass under HRC with a GOP controlled House?
There is the question of an internal control failure.
Obviously.
Has there been any Republican Presidential candidate since 1980, including primary candidates, who didn’t vow to cut taxes, thereby making matters worse, not better?
Compare GWB’s deficits and Obama’s. Not even close.
What major categories of spending would you like to see cut?
All of it. Freeze everything. Then reallocate as need. Built in increases, or “cutting” the rate of increase, is killing us.
As for taxes, yes she is proposing some increases.
Her cap gain proposals are stupid/ignorant/dumb. WTF? Who the hell is going to make a capital investment under that regime?
The fact is the tax code has been heavily tilted in favor of the extremely wealthy for a long time,
In what particular way? I’m pretty well off, income-wise at least and I’m damned if I’m being treated particularly well. There are basically two kinds of income: ordinary and cap gains. Everyone pays tax on their gain or income. I paid 34% of my total income to the feds last year. That does not count another 4% in state income tax and another 2% in state property taxes. I’m right at 40% of my income going to federal and state gov’t.
Besides, concern about the deficit doesn’t sit comfortably with opposition to any tax increase.
Taxes have already been increased, but nothing has been done about the deficit. So, asking for more tax increases doesn’t sit comfortably until you show you are serious about the deficit.
Examples of counterproductive Obama regulations, please.
Google “regulatory burden under Obama”. Even discount the reports by half and you have a very significant increase, and only microscopic decrease, in the regulatory load.
Please explain to the peanut gallery how all these so-called nightmarish things could come to pass under HRC with a GOP controlled House?
Spending won’t change. Stupid continuing budget resolution. Regulatory stuff is independent of congress. Taxes will remain the same, granted. New programs? Have to wait and see. The main issue is whether the GOP can hold the house.
Besides, concern about the deficit doesn’t sit comfortably with opposition to any tax increase.
Oh, sure does, if you’re an anarcho-capitalist, or at least aspiring to be.
add to that, the ~$4M the CFPB fined them a couple of weeks ago for shady student loan practices.
http://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-takes-action-against-wells-fargo-illegal-student-loan-servicing-practices/
My Trump supporting friends and relatives seem certain that congress can keep The Don in check. I’m less certain and want to see his tax returns to determine if he is in debt to the Russian Mafia.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/9/1568307/-Grand-Old-Putin-Donald-Trump-delivers-the-Republican-Party-to-the-Russian-Federation
Compare GWB’s deficits and Obama’s. Not even close.
correct!
the deficit exploded under W’s last budget (exacerbated by the loss of revenue due to W’s 2007 financial crisis).
since Obama took office, it’s come down ~$1T.
I paid 34% of my total income to the feds last year. That does not count another 4% in state income tax and another 2% in state property taxes. I’m right at 40% of my income going to federal and state gov’t.
How does the marginal tax rate system work?
There is the question of an internal control failure.
Obviously.
I get the impression these actions were by sales staff under heavy pressure to meet sales goals. How thousands of sales folks could glom on to the same techniques is simply beyond my comprehension.
Obviously, upper management didn’t bother to look too closely as to how these great numbers were achieved, or they actually did set this fudge ball rolling.
In any event, malfeasance, and corporate crime result, and the public gets the shaft.
Result: WF gets a slap on the wrist ($200m is not quite 1% of their NET income).
Compare GWB’s deficits and Obama’s. Not even close.
Here you go:
2000 86,422
2001 -32,445
2002 -317,417
2003 -538,418
2004 -567,961
2005 -493,611
2006 -434,494
2007 -342,153
2008 -641,848
2009 -1,549,681
2010 -1,371,378
2011 -1,366,772
2012 -1,148,876
2013 -719,007
2014 -514,139
2015 -465,701
2016 estimate -623,804
2017 estimate -501,762
These are “on-budget” figures. Note the change from 2000, Clinton’s last year in office, to 2008. The deficit took off during Obama’s first term, due to the recession and the stimulus program. It has dropped since, so the 2016 deficit will be slightly smaller than the 2008 figure. This is in nominal dollars. As a percent of GDP we are now well under 3%, good by historical standards.
In what particular way? I’m pretty well off, income-wise at least and I’m damned if I’m being treated particularly well. There are basically two kinds of income: ordinary and cap gains. Everyone pays tax on their gain or income. I paid 34% of my total income to the feds last year.
Unless your AGI is $5 million or above you will see little or no increase. For those with AGI over $1 million there will be a 30% minimum, but you are already paying more than that.
Google “regulatory burden under Obama”
I did. There’s a report from Heritage – an organization run by that economic genius Jim DeMint – that alleges costs of $100 billion. Whatever the analysis that led to that figure, I find no mention of any benefits whatsoever. I’d say that’s plainly disqualifying when someone is trying to do an economic analysis of regulations.
Much of the rest is stories about the number of pages and so on. Not very informative, or maybe that’s the best the writers could do.
Couldn’t resist:
WTF?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/so-this-is-actually-happening
Putin has completely infiltrated the dominant, ascendant conservative movements, yeah, Trump is a conservative too, in the United States and England without firing a shot.
No doubt France and Germany too.
I’ll wonder if we’ll have hearings about this on Capitol Hill or will they be deep into investigating whether Clinton sits or stands when her plumbing uses the plumbing and then jailing her for answering yes and no.
The killing that is going to be have be done in this country to cleanse us of these filth is going to be something to behold.
Can a guy blog from Guantanamo? I hope so, cause that’s where I’m going.
dominant, ascendant conservative movement… in England
… Nigel Farage ???!!
The ones actually in government aren’t all that keen on Putin.
He was pretty handy engineering BREXIT.
I’m going to be covering the American election as a stringer for North Korea’s National News Agency.
I hope that doesn’t bother Paul Ryan, Michelle Bachmann, Joe McCarthy, and Edgar Bergen, and if it does they can go fuck each other.
American evangelicals and Putin’s Russian Mafia teaming up to get Trump in the White House.
Yeah, but emails.
Influential American money manager and Trump cheerleader Jeff Gundlach, routs the world markets today to damage Clinton’s chances.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-gundlachs-fed-tightening-talk-set-stage-for-a-stock-bond-market-meltdown-2016-09-09?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts
Trump will point to this decline and blame Clinton for roiling the markets …. by the close of business today.
A good hard look at bond and stock index options activity in recent weeks, while we still have market regulators these next few last months before America becomes once and for all a steaming sack of horseshit shat by sadists, will show that Russian oligarchs attached to the Putin/Trump/Congressional Evangelical Republican axis made billions of dollars front running today’s comments and the 394-point decline in the American market that ensued, through ghost accounts at major Wall Street and London trading desks.
Look, there is no amount of government that is too much for the Democrats, and only marginally less than that is acceptable to the Republicans. Neither will reduce spending over time, although they will increase spending on different things. The Democrats will spend significantly more to enforce what we can and cant do,the republicans want us to have the best military toys that money can buy.
Aside from pure party politics, Hilary wants all of the above and Trump hasn’t a clue what we should spend money on so he proffered Ryan’s plan.
Directly in Obamas oath Hillary believes that government knows best and should tell us what to do even if our elected Congress disagrees.
And then Justices.
Lots of things from a policy and execution standpoint she will screw up.
I’m going to be covering the American election as a stringer for North Korea’s National News Agency.
not possible, they outlawed you.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/09/08/north-korean-dictator-kim-jong-un-bans-sarcasm.html
“These are “on-budget” figures. Note the change from 2000, Clinton’s last year in office, to 2008. The deficit took off during Obama’s first term, due to the recession and the stimulus program. It has dropped since, so the 2016 deficit will be slightly smaller than the 2008 figure. This is in nominal dollars. As a percent of GDP we are now well under 3%, good by historical standards.”
Except none of this can be attributed to Obama or the Democrats who never even voted on a budget. The Just say No Republicans risked backlash and all kinds of criticism to control spending as much as they could, to the point where Obama had to go around them, and force them to raise the debt ceiling and fund stuff they didn’t want to.
To attribute any lessening of the deficit to Obama is pure fantasy. He submitted budget after budget proposal that even the Democrats wouldn’t consider.
Re: no amount of government is too much. . .
Yes, that’s why a Democratic congress and president created our shiny, new government run National Health Service, with most medical practioners now federal employees, instead of letting the free market, in the form of private insurance companies, provide health coverage, like what that nice Mr. Romney supported in Massachusetts.
Marty,
The Just say No Republicans risked backlash and all kinds of criticism to control spending as much as they could, to the point where Obama had to go around them, and force them to raise the debt ceiling and fund stuff they didn’t want to.
Please go learn what the debt ceiling is before you talk about how the GOP was forced to raise it. You might also try to inform yourself as to the consequences of a refusal to raise it. This has been endlessly discussed and explained, but remains some sort of RW obsession.
Also learn about the budget process.
And while you are at it, go read McK’s comment that I was responding to. He specifically said,
“Compare GWB’s deficits and Obama’s. Not even close.”
That’s the comparison I did. You don’t like it – it makes you uncomfortable to think Obama hasn’t brought the country to the edge of bankruptcy? Too bad. The numbers are there, and of course as has also been endlessly pointed out countries on the edge of bankruptcy don’t get to borrow money for 30 years at 2.4%.
I thought you guys trusted markets. Not when you don’t want to hear what they are saying, I guess.
Much of the rest is stories about the number of pages and so on. Not very informative, or maybe that’s the best the writers could do.
I just filled out an EEO-1. This from our HR Director: “The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requires organizations with 100 or more employees/new hires to invite applicants to self-identify gender and race and complete an EEO-1 report each year.”
So, this would be a new, stupid regulation.
In anticipation of you questions, I self-identified as “male” and “white”. Intersectionality!
The transgender bathroom thing for every public school in the country would be another.
The forced changes in how sexual assaults are handled in colleges getting federal funds would be yet another.
That’s the comparison I did. You don’t like it – it makes you uncomfortable to think Obama hasn’t brought the country to the edge of bankruptcy? Too bad.
We owe nearly 20 trillion with almost half of that being borrowed on O’s shift. Your numbers make my point. Just because we aren’t borrowing *as much* doesn’t mean we aren’t borrowing way more than we should.
“I thought you guys trusted markets. Not when you don’t want to hear what they are saying, I guess.”
I don’t disagree with your numbers, nor did I use the debt ceiling as anything except a constant reminder that no one is cutting the actual spending. I just pointed out that Obama had f@ck all to do with it.
Just because we aren’t borrowing *as much* doesn’t mean we aren’t borrowing way more than we should.
Well, way more than you think we should. I’m not aware of an objective standard for that, though I think, as I pointed out to Marty, that bond market reactions tell us something pretty useful.
You asked me to compare the deficits under GWB and Obama and I did. Why are you changing the subject to the size of the debt?
In anticipation of you questions, I self-identified as “male” and “white”.
I had no intention of asking.
Still, it’s nice to know we have two things in common, anyway.
“Except none of this can be attributed to Obama or the Democrats who never even voted on a budget. The Just say No Republicans risked backlash and all kinds of criticism to control spending as much as they could, to the point where Obama had to go around them, and force them to raise the debt ceiling and fund stuff they didn’t want to.
To attribute any lessening of the deficit to Obama is pure fantasy. He submitted budget after budget proposal that even the Democrats wouldn’t consider.”
Wait, Marty…if you are going to yell about Obama deficits on the one hand and how Clinton will be even worse, you can’t then turn around and say that Obama had no role in the budget that was passed. Are you saying that Obama had no effect on the budget or are you saying that the budget results are to be laid at his feet for good or ill? You can’t have both no matter how much your rampant confirmation bias wants it to be so.
Pick a standard and stick with it.
“Pick a standard and stick with it.”
I have stuck with it. Find a contradiction. The deficit has gone down because the Republican controlled House wouldn’t let him spend us into bankruptcy.
By,
While the markets clearly still see us as the best fish in a sucky pond, that doesn’t mean those interest rates will last forever, then the deficit explodes again because, oh, interest on too much debt. At 7%, IIRC, the debt is unserviceable if we pay for anything else.
Trump is Putin’s poodle, and will bring down the country. The fact that McKinney and Marty want to sit back and eat popcorn while this happens, rather than actively opposing it by working for Clinton … well, I hope your tax cut is worth it, boys.
This is interesting, and hopeful:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-37324872
And if it works, will rewrite much of the foreign policy narrative.
And if it works, will rewrite much of the foreign policy narrative.
I agree that it’s hopeful news, but how will it rewrite the foreign policy narrative? Whose narrative?
Marty and McTX do have a standard: Democrats bad; HRC horrible.
They will never, ever, deviate from that standard.
–TP
The deficit has gone down because the Republican controlled House wouldn’t let him spend us into bankruptcy.
Because they wouldn’t pass any of Obama’s budgets that you, in turn, charge the Democrats with “not ever voting on a budget?”
That is nonsense. Absent passing an Obama budget, you have no clue as to it’s economic effects, because they weren’t passed.
You know, I’ve listened to wingers go on for over 50 years with scare stories about the size of the US debt. You guys think you’ve latched on to something new here?
The obvious fact that we have not turned into Weimar Germany in all that time pretty much destroys this claim….utterly and completely.
The real marker is the size of the debt interest payments due in relation to GNP and the trend, if one can be determined, of that relationship.
Right now, that number is at an historic low.
All this twaddle about the size of the debt (absent any, you know, actually looking at the numbers such as intra government debt such as the SS Trust Fund, fed reserve holdings, etc.) is just ignorant noise.
So-stop being ignorant. Read up on this issue outside the propaganda from the Peterson and Heritage Foundations.
I would freeze federal spending at current levels… I would keep that freeze in effect for two years minimum.
How does that work? Demographics means that SS and Medicare have spending increases already baked in, unless you cut individual benefits. Unless the Fed is committed to free money for the big banks forever, interest on the debt has a spending increase baked in. Even a mild recession would mean Medicaid spending increases. I’m perfectly happy with taking big hunks out of the defense budget, which is pretty much the only place to do offsets on that scale.
What’s your plan for the freeze?
So tell me, Marty, if we have $20 trillion of bonds out there at an average 2.4% interest rate, and interest rates go up to 7%, do interest payments remitted by the Treasury for these bonds go up?
Ah for the days when the CbO was predicting surpluses (2001) and the response of the GOP was to… Cut taxes! Because its always time to cut taxes for the GOP.
No bobbyp, but the rollovers do, and unless we plan to service the debt by paying it off, which we haven’t budgeted for in my lifetime, the rates go up.
And while the government, IIRC, has been trying to lengthen the average maturity, I will admit I don’t know the mix today. But its not like we don’t have regular bond sales to cover maturities.
And there is no need to be obnoxious.
since what we’re talking about is a presidential election, it seems to me that the relevant question is who will be a better POTUS.
either Clinton or Trumo will be POTUS come January. which of them would do a better job?
it doesn’t seem like a hard question to me.
The obvious fact that we have not turned into Weimar Germany in all that time pretty much destroys this claim….utterly and completely.
Perhaps not quite completely. The boy has cried “Wolf!” over and over, and nothing has ever happened. But that doesn’t mean nothing ever will. If a stopped clock is right twice a day, perhaps a disaster prediction will be right once every [insert your time span of choice].
Another example of Clinton being a poor campaigner:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-37327156
Insulting the supporters of your opponent (however true the insult might be) is not going to win votes. Cameron did something similar with UKIP voters a while back, and had it quoted against him ad nauseam for years:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4875502.stm
I largely agreed with him (and find it difficult not to agree with Clinton), but it’s entirely counterproductive.
“And there is no need to be obnoxious.”
Were you referring to bobbyp’s 8:51 comment? Obnoxious because it talks about actual *numbers* and stuff like that?
The USA has been in debt since day 1. Mostly the quantity of debt has increased from year to year. And yet rates are currently low. This is objective reality.
“unless we plan to service the debt by paying it off, … the rates go up.”
So I’m also going to be obnoxious and ask:
Got an actual calculation to back up that assertion? As in, based on a macroeconomic model that doesn’t fail badly at “post-diction”?
Do the math. Show your work. Otherwise it’s all hot air and hand waving and “OH MY GHOD WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!” ideologically motivated panic.
You know, like accusations about climate change, except for the huge IPCC reports that actually does “do the math” and “show their work”. At least with national budgets and debt, etc., there’s much less of a problem getting accurate measurements to put into the models.
And no, Marty, it doesn’t have to be you, personally, that “does the math”; but someone has to, and the politicians and think-tank or talk-radio pundits of whatever stripe don’t either. I suggest looking toward the CBO or professional macroeconomists.
This is all my attempt to regurgitate Krugman:
In theory too much debt can be bad. However, sometimes too little debt can be bad. We aren’t really in danger of too much debt and haven’t been for several decades (ironically, the same period of time during which conservatives have been hyperventilating about too much debt). One useful piece of evidence of whether we’re in too much debt is what interest rate we need to provide in order to sell Treasuries (i.e. U.S. debt) to people who, in theory, should be afraid of our ability to repay. The hyperventilators are constantly warning that the market for Treasuries is about to collapse because of our profligate spending.
Back here in reality, the interest rate we need to pay on Treasuries to sell them is quite low. So the Market itself (which the hyperventilators usually claim, when it suits them, to fanatically worship) doesn’t think that our deficits are too high, and continues merrily on investing in U.S. debt even when they payoff is weak.
So is there a response to that? I’m genuinely curious, not being an expert myself, and understanding that this is a topic requiring some expertise.
Math, CBO, positive interpretation. You can decide that the CBO interest projections are just right or too high, I suspect over ten years they are too low, but let’s go with the CBO.
Servicing the debt quadrupled in ten years at 3.5% rates. It’s the third qlargest budget item and impacts our ability to fund other things.
http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/articles/Will-Rising-U-S-Debt-Levels-Keep-the-Fed-On-Hold
I would add that Peterson is pretty much all numbers, but they don’t agree with your numbers so looking at them is ignorant? I don’t read the heritage foundation much.
But interest rates were 17% in our lifetime bobbyp, so dismissing the possibility, and rejecting out of hand the potential impact, seems shortsighted to me.
If you’re worried about big deficits and high interest rates, you haven’t been paying attention.
He conveniently starts in the mid 80s so the data will match his thesis. But, I never said big deficits were related to high interest rates. I said large debt is dangerous because we don’t worry about it when rates are low.
But rates rise, because of what Krugman says, the macroeconomic environment is different than the Fed. Then the Fed has to match the markets to generate enough demand.
But, I never said big deficits were related to high interest rates.
Except that they are – inversely.
since what we’re talking about is a presidential election, it seems to me that the relevant question is who will be a better POTUS.
either Clinton or Trumo will be POTUS come January. which of them would do a better job?
it doesn’t seem like a hard question to me.
As usual, Russell puts his finger right on it, although for me, it’s not just who would do a better job as POTUS, which is obviously a partisan issue. I may have phrased my post above ambiguously, but I am sure the nub of this hugely important election is this: unless Trump gets beaten decisively and overwhelmingly in the popular vote, there will be doubt about whether or not the American public rejects his authoritarianism, racism, misogyny etc, now and more importantly for the future. This being the case, how can people who intend to vote for neither HRC nor Trump justify their non-contribution to this vital rejection? I understand that Marty and McKinney and many other sane rightwingers despise and reject HRC, but it beats me that they do not/cannot see that rejecting what Trump stands for is more important than avoiding an HRC presidency, however undesirable such a presidency looks to them.
I’m sorry for the repetition, when it is probably just an invitation to go over the same ground again and again, and I know and usually agree with Godwin’s Law, but looking at Trump rallies the comparison is unavoidable. It’s not that I think he is a nazi, it’s what he is legitimising and unleashing.
Nigel, I agree that Clinton is a lousy campaigner, and no doubt she will punished for her words, and I know you agree for the most part with her statement, but in the current environment that Trump and his fellow travelers have masterfully and purposefully poisoned racially and ethnically, and then accused anyone who is sickened by the filth coming out of their mouths of political correctness, I’m gratified she named names.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/09/alt-right-leaders-we-aren-t-racist-we-just-hate-jews.html
from here:
https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/09/10/saturday-morning-open-thread-basket-of-deplorables/
It’s about fucking time.
What, a liberal isn’t even permitted to use FIRST AMENDMENT remedies because the feelings of racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic thugs, who have populated the Republican base for decades, might be ruffled?
And I don’t feel sorry for the well-meaning folks who are content to run with these scum to achieve their ends. You lie down with fleas, your dog will be put down. At this point, I don’t care what the blow back is.
Because, here’s the thing, win or lose, the ugliness that Trump has caused to be vomited up to achieve whatever malicious ends he seeks in this mess, isn’t going away, now that it has been “legitimized and unleashed”, by Republican Party operatives and our useless press, to use GFTNC’s perfect words. And the thugs, including him and his fellow Republican haters, win or lose, are going to have much more to worry about, including their personal safety, than a few true, mean words by Hillary Clinton.
They’ve declared war on my country. People die in war. Them.
They and this country have no idea what is coming to them for this behavior. They need to be removed from civilized society feet first. And there are millions of them. David Bossie’s feet, I expect, will lead the way.
Every political cycle the last 30 years is worse than the last. This is the last for them.
Anyone want to call Hillary a liar for calling these filth “deplorables”? I hope she emails all of us with those very words from her private server so idiots can call it a lie.
Because, if so, drop dead.
“Fair question. I think she’ll continue bankrupting the country with more and more debt. She’ll initiate new programs without ending old ones. Like every other Democrat, every single penny of spending is sacrosanct except for national defense/security. She’ll raise taxes even further. She will continue the regulatory regime that Obama has sponsored, which dampens the economy even further. She will continue the concentration of power in the executive through aggressive rule making and guidance. ACA will be allowed to stumble along. I won’t like her judicial appointments.”
By the way, these are bog standard Democratic positions. So you’re saying that any Democratic presidential nominee is too awful for you to vote for over Trump.
You may like to think you’re above it all, but you’re going to help Trump with your vote.
Nigel, let me borrow this phrasing from a commenter at Balloon Juice named PPCLI:
“I am tired of walking through parking lots with my fourteen year old daughter and having her point out to me pickup trucks festooned with “Trump that Bitch” / “Hilary Sucks but Not Like Monica” / LIfe’s a Bitch, Don’t Elect One” / “Two Fat Thighs, Two Small Breasts, Left Wing” / “This Bitch Is Batshit Crazy”/ etc.
If the Trump people are going to encourage, embrace and promote this, throwing this group red meat at their rallies, etc., they have to own it.”
Also, what GFTNC and the Count said.
uh oh
wj: Fixed it.
http://juanitajean.com/well-thats-good-to-know/
Reporters are so relieved at this news that they now feel free to spend the next two weeks deploring Clinton for her remarks about the deplorables.
America is full of shit.
interest rates were 17% in our lifetime bobbyp, so dismissing the possibility, and rejecting out of hand the potential impact, seems shortsighted to me.
It’s quite true about interest rates. But it conveniently ignores the fact that when that happened inflation was in the 15% range. Which is to say,
a) the real (as opposed to nominal) value of the debt we already had was nose-diving, and
b) the real (as opposed to nominal) interest rate we were paying was still a couple of percent.
Basically, we pay the usual interest rate (which barely moves over the decades) plus the inflation rate. Occasionally rates go higher, if the Fed is trying to drive down out-of-control inflation. But basically, real rates don’t go up anywhere near what just quoting “17% interest” would suggest at innocent first hearing. When we paid 17%, it wasn’t because anyone doubted our ability** to repay. They just wanted to keep the real rate they were getting above zero.
** Our willingness to repay may be a different story. With the game of chicken that some Congressmen have been playing with the debt ceiling, that might be in question now.
But even with those childish games, the market apparently still feels like the worst that will happen is that maturing US government bonds will get paid off a few days late. Not good at all, but perhaps enough to keep the entire financial system from melting down.
wj, I am pretty sure that, while your numbers are accurate, the impact on our countries budget is no different. The only potential positive out of that is that tax receipts would be up. Of course, the two things together were staggeringly bad for the country, poor people in particular.
It is still a big assumption, again, that real rates won’t ever go up.
But the CBO thinks that the rates matter. They project that in 30 years the interest on the debt will be the largest component of our spending.
But then I will likely be dead.
It is still a big assumption, again, that real rates won’t ever go up.
But the CBO thinks that the rates matter. They project that in 30 years the interest on the debt will be the largest component of our spending.
It’s also a big assumption that the country is somewhere close to being bankrupted and that that’s what should determine policy.
What does the rest of the CBO’s model look like?
GFTNC,
I will say this once more, for an almost completely different set of reasons I feel just as strongly that Clinton should not get elected as I feel Trump shouldn’t. I don’t care what margin of victory there is, I don’t want her to be President. In fact, if she is elected I want it to be by the narrowest of margins so it will be clear that she has no mandate and is considered his equivalent.
Your very premise, that somehow not voting for her helps Trump is false. Voting for Trump helps Trump. Voting for Johnson says that I prefer him over both of them. I am sitting nothing out. I am campaigning for Johnson. I am an ardent attendee by social media of every rally.
Hsu, the term bankrupt doesn’t actually apply directly, as bobbyp says, we can just print more money. But the CBO says that over the next 10 and 30 years the percentage of our budget that even resembles discretionary becomes ever smaller. So the practical result is not only smaller government but greater cost. An odd mix that should be unacceptable to everyone.
She’s not his equivalent. You can’t reasonably make the argument that she is without believing a large number of falsehoods and conspiracy theories about her. It’s absolutely ridiculous to think that. Trump is dangerous and would be utterly incompetent as president. And don’t give me the crap argument that he can’t be dangerous if he’s incompetent. Part of the reason he’s dangerous is because he’d be incompetent.
It is still a big assumption, again, that real rates won’t ever go up.
It is indeed an assumption. But one which is at least rooted in the historical record.
Do you happen to be aware of a historical period in which real rates did go up (other than when the Fed was acting to drive down inflation)? I’m not saying that there isn’t one; happy to be educated on the point.
Well wj, the market adjusted Friday because the Boston Fed President suggested that it is likely that the economy would overheat unless the Fed acted to prevent it. Thus the expectation that real interest rates would go up. And this
http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2013/08/22/54-years-of-real-interest-rates/?referer=
I dunno…it’s either mass hypnosis or mass insanity. How can we tell one from the other?
I want to reply to Marty: I saw recently (on the CNN profile program) Hillary’s speech in Congress in which she gave her reasons for supporting the Iraq Military Authorization. In it she clearly said she was not supporting invasion, and she warned Bush not to exceed the limitation of what Congress intended (she mentioned “leverage”). Now, the fact was the act itself was not limited, but her intention was not to go to war.
I think she’ll continue bankrupting the country with more and more debt.
You know, if you believe the country is near bankruptcy, you might think that, as much as you don’t like them, tax increases are one way to address the problem.
But the Republicans, far from ever suggesting such a thing, seem to believe that the universal solvent for all fiscal issues is cutting taxes. Now, I know that they also like to talk about cutting spending, but their cuts are never anything like adequate to balance the budget. And when challenged on Medicare they back off quickly, as they should, claiming to shocked at the very thought. Remember 2012 when Lyin’ Ryan falsely criticized Obama for Medicare cuts, when he himself had proposed numerous cuts?
Do you recall Ryan’s original “roadmap,” for balancing the budget, which brought him such undeserved fame? No? Here is a summary:
1. Cut Medicare
2. Use the savings to finance tax cuts for the wealthy
3. Profit!! or perhaps, Balanced Budget!!
So it’s really not possible to take GOP concern over the deficit seriously. Nothing but more BS to scare the rubes.
You like her so her lies and incompetence don’t matter. I mean jeez, John Kerry has been a better SOS, to my great surprise.
But I don’t have to believe anything but the truth to despise her. He is brutally unprepared, she is just incompetent and evil.
she is just incompetent and evil.
of course she is.
no evidence required.
If by “He is brutally unprepared” you mean Kerry, it would be interesting to know just what you would consider adequate preparation.
Perhaps with a couple of examples of past SoSs that you consider to have been adequately prepared. Then we can at least look at how they did at the job.
He is brutally unprepared was Trump
I don’t care what margin of victory there is, I don’t want her to be President. In fact, if she is elected I want it to be by the narrowest of margins so it will be clear that she has no mandate and is considered his equivalent.
He is brutally unprepared, she is just incompetent and evil.
Marty, my point is that she is not his equivalent. You have said in the past that she has an ongoing criminal career, you say here she is incompetent and evil. Clearly nobody on ObWi, with the possible exception of McKinney, agrees with you about your opinion of her. But whatever you think of her, Trump is very clearly something completely different. I’m not even talking about his obvious corruption, because you think she is corrupt too. I’m not talking about his incessant and egregious lying, because you think she lies too, (although when you look at the percentages on Politifact and others there is no comparison); I’m not talking about his ADHD which means he will never read his briefs properly, never understand the issues completely and will make decisions (of life and death if President) on a whim; but most importantly, what I am talking about is the hope and comfort he gives to white supremacists, anti-semites, mysogynists and other bigots everywhere. Do you really want America to be the standard bearer for racism and bigotry worldwide? Do you really want the American President to be so stupid and naive that he praises brutal dictators because they flatter him? Do you want America to be led by a man who thinks torture is no problem, and the killing of terrorists’ families is an excellent tactic?
What in God’s name do you think Hillary could do as President that would be equivalent to all this, and do as much harm to your country and the world?
All He, Trump needs to become P.G. Wodehouse’s Roderick Spode is to adopt black shorts (“Footer bags, you mean?” “Yes.” “How perfectly foul.”) to replace his red hats. Roderick Spode’s supporters (“Saviours of Britain”, also known as the Black Shorts because, by the time they formed, all the shirts were already taken by other fascist groups) no doubt objected to being called “reprehensible”, although The Code of the Woosters is silent on that point.
Half of He, Trump’s modern-day supporters (but which half? did anybody ask HRC that?) are reprehensible, and proud of it. Yet when Hillary acknowledges that glaringly obvious fact, she gets no thanks for her honesty.
Roderick Spode was a fictional buffoon who could be brought to heel by Jeeves digging up his embarassing secret (“Eulalie?”) but real-life buffoon He, Trump gets a pass on his tax returns. Because the press hasn’t got balls enough to offend the reprehensibles these days.
–TP
“He is brutally unprepared, she is just incompetent and evil.”
I mean, by comparison he doesn’t sound so bad, given your characterization of Trump as the kid whose rottweiler fighting dog ate his homework, but not, you know, Evil, like that fucking evil bitch cunt (quoting Republican on-the-record Trump supporters … all unprepared but essentially good, decent people, it must be presumed, given your standards… and their bumper-stickers, those last four words)
Given a second chance, “He is brutally unprepared was Trump”.
Beginning of a limerick?
But not Evil yet, even upon further consideration? Maybe approaching Evil? In second place, maybe, at least in the EVIL sweepstakes, just behind Hillary, Pol Pot, and higher marginal tax rates, all tied for first?
C’mon, Marty, call it a draw between Clinton and Trump on the Evil score so we can all go home knowing you a serious person with some sense of balance.
Otherwise, you’ve given your game away and this thread’s comments need to be closed because there is nothing left to say.
I know you don’t want him to win either, but it has to be one of them. And, as I made clear earlier, if he was clearly and decisively beaten in the popular vote, it would at least make clear that America decisively rejects everything he stands for.
wj, thanks for fixing my comment up there. I’ll try to remember to use the preview button.
GftNC, Let me make this clear. The US under Obama has come to the edge of being a dictatorship. Once again today the President stepped in and overruled the other two branches, the day after a court decision didn’t go his way.
Hillary would undoubtedly complete that by appointing at least one Justice that would side with the court that the Executive has the right to tell us how we should live our lives in any way they want. There is no amount of damage that Trump could do in four years that would equate to the destruction of our way of life if she has the mandate to accomplish the ruin of our Republic and the Court to back it up. The fact that she is ultimately corrupt is not some political estimation, she has no conscience and is on the verge of being a dictator. For us, if not the rest of the world, she is as dangerous as Trump.
I am worried about my grandchildren’s freedom, not what the world thinks of us.
And, btw, Obama and Kerry cut a deal with that brutal dictator yesterday to create a cease fire in Syria AND a coordinated military answer to ISIS. When Obama met with the Russians and told them to let Putin know that he could be “more flexible” after he was reelected the right howled and the left shrugged. Now he’s a brutal dictator, world politics are complex.
And, btw, Obama and Kerry cut a deal with that brutal dictator yesterday to create a cease fire in Syria AND a coordinated military answer to ISIS.
That would be the same brutal dictator that Trump keeps expressing his admiration for, right? They make a one-off agreement with Putin to do something; Trump apparently wants to climb in bed with him. If that’s anywhere near equivalent behavior, I guess I need to review the definition of the word.
I see.
“He is brutally unprepared, she is just incompetent and evil.”
Marty, your self-made reputation for balanced objectivity suffers a mortal blow here.
I’d have accepted “He is brutally unprepared and she is just incompetent. Both are evil.”
Maybe even “He is brutally unprepared and she is just incompetent. He is racist, misogynist, a bigot on more than several fronts, a lover of torture and nuclear war and finishes a close second in the evil sweepstakes, but, she .. that cunt bitch (can I quote on the record Republican Trump supporters, or are we too delicate to look it in the eye?), is Beelzebub with tits and a vibrator.
But even on consideration for a second clarification we get:
“He is brutally unprepared was Trump”
Still no evil. Like Trump’s just a well-meaning schlump whose beaten attack dogs ate his homework while taking a break beating the shit out of Americans at Trump rallies. Hell, Ted Bundy could run for President under these shit rules and propose drastic cuts in marginal tax rates and the conclusion would be:
“Bundy is brutally unprepared, but he somehow charms the girls. Clinton is just incompetent and evil.
You wouldn’t even have to throw in that Gary Johnson would kill Americans by gutting the federal safety net. I guess that’s not evil, it’s just business.
C’mon, place Trump and Clinton on a par evil-ly so we can all go home knowing you are a serious person.
You can do it.
Else, shut down the comments on this thread because there is nothing left to say.
The US under Obama has come to the edge of being a dictatorship.
It’s very dispiriting to argue with this kind of nonsense. I tend to lose interest, which is a really dangerous trend.
Yes. Really, it’s impossible to know what to say.
“The US under Obama has come to the edge of being a dictatorship.”
The Executive Order banning the consumption of chlorine bleach was particularly tyrannical. I urge civil disobedience.
“The US under Obama has come to the edge of being a dictatorship”
were i a cartoon character (not saying I’m not one, mind you), this is when little question and explanation marks would appear above my head.
whiskey tango foxtrot.
The US under Obama has come to the edge of being a dictatorship.
seek help. seriously.
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration stepped into a dispute on Friday over a planned oil pipeline in North Dakota that has angered Native Americans, appealing for calm while blocking construction on federal land and asking the company behind the project to suspend work nearby.
The move came shortly after US District Judge James Boasberg in Washington rejected a request from Native Americans for a court order to block the project. The government’s action reflected the success of growing protests over the proposed $3.7 billion pipeline crossing four states which have sparked a renewal of Native American activism.
“This case has highlighted the need for a serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes’ views on these types of infrastructure projects,” the US Departments of Justice, Army and Interior said in a joint statement released minutes after Boasberg’s ruling. ”
Its not on their land, there is no science or engineering saying it risks any natural resource and the court found the day before that there is no grounds to stop it. So the Obama administration decides we should have “nationwide reform”. That’s tantamount to imposing martial law.
Yes. I’m not leaving my house for fear of being shot on sight by the authorities in light of this. Obama will stop at nothing.
“blocking construction on federal land” and “asking the company to . . . suspect work nearby” [emphasis added] is tantamount to imposing martial law? You can’t be serious.
I’ve got doubts (but, not having read up on the case, no more than that) that the administration should have done this. But martial law, or anything even vaguely near it, it just ain’t.
Marty,
I am curious as to what Obama did here that exceeded his statutory authority.
The court ruled that the tribe’s complaint was not enough to stop the pipeline, but that doesn’t mean the government loses its authority over federal land, does it?
except that they had all the permits, clearances etc. to proceed. This was an arbitrary revoking of those.
“arbitrary revoking”
The Native American tribes know all about America’s “arbitrary revoking”.
“Arbitrary revoking” is what Donald Trump, Gary Johnson and their murderous Republican cousins in Congress will do to 20 million Americans’ access to health insurance and healthcare in their first day in office next January, just as a starter amuse buse for those murderous, sadistic predators.
I lived in a country under martial law for a couple of years. Here’s how it worked. The underdog tribes in the country were bribed, harrassed, brutalized, raped, driven from their villages, and murdered by the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of that government on behalf of the majority corporate vermin in the country who had, in a system much like David Bossie’s Citizen United, bought the entire mess to extract resources from the powerless minority lands and the surrounding territory.
Under martial law, minorities are targeted by the pigfuck majority, not protected by at least one branch of our government, the Executive, as is happening in the Dakotas.
I doubt very much that we’re going to hear the same lack of empathy from conservative vermin when Republican white ranchers and landowners use their Second Amendment rights to counter the taking of their lands by eminent domain along the route of the Keystone Pipeline, when it is approved Trump’s first day in office.
No, then it will be “takings”, and “call in the white militias”, won’t it? Or probably not, since the entire populist pig grift from the Right is financed by elitist corporate billions.
Meanwhile, Trump is merely brutally unprepared, despite he and his followers on the record misogynist, racist, ethnic hatreds, infinitely expressed, which they plan on carrying out under federal martial law measures at the behest of the murderous Republican majority.
Not evil, mind you.
Only Clinton, that evil bitch cunt (I quote directly from on-the-record Republicans voting for Trump and Marty who is not voting for Trump; or am I supposed to be politically correct and not quote them?), is characterized as evil.
Your hard won reputation for balance when condemning both Trump and Clinton equally is now shot, Marty.
You gave up your game there.
You are not going to own Trump and company. So, I hope you maintain the same distancing when those filth are being fucking killed in this country for what they are going do to human beings here and around the world.
Keep your head down. Stay neutral.
P.S. I see Clinton partially apologized for her “Deplorables” comment. I think she’s lying. In her heart of hearts, I think what she wanted to express was upping the estimate to 75% from her previous 49% guess. She may lose my vote for that prevarication.
I don’t think that answers the question.
It may be that what Obama did was unfair. I have no idea. But if you are going to use it as evidence that he is a dictator you need more than that.
DId he break the law?
I’ve had four comments disappear, at first, I thought, because of keyboard incompetence on my part, but now I conclude it’s because I use the English language in its full depravity, only quoting Republicans, mind you.
I’m outta here.
I don’t know about illegal, but it is:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/federal-intervention-on-oil-pipeline-project-unprecedented/ar-AAiK7hD?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp
‘tantamount’ = ‘bad analogy alert’
just saying.
Marty, old buddy: I’ve actually lived under martial law. (Philippines, 1972-73) I’ve lived under a dictatorship. Nothing you have mentioned is REMOTELY like either of these things.
I can understand excesses of rhetoric, and have been known to indulge in them myself. The problem is that in this kind of forum they rather cripple discourse, unless they attain the kind of poetic overkill that “Countme-In” occasionally reaches, in which case readers simply applaud (or retch) more or less silently and move on.
If you seriously mean what you said, you are either stupid or crazy or both. Which I doubt.
If you are just exaggerating, as I suspect, the rest of us – possibly excepting McKT – are stymied, because we don’t know just what you actually mean.
Except that you hate Hillary. Which we knew.
I believe that you can do better. I hope I’m right.
Dr, I am trying to get people to understand the absurdity of the stance that one or the other of Trump and Clinton is so bad that we should just vote for the other one. In this forum that stance is for Clinton, in other forums it’s for Trump.
While martial law may be pretty far down the road, or even unnecessary, the empress President is not. The current, thus Clinton, administration is so certain of their beliefs they are willing to ignore any limitations, checks or balances. Hillary is orders of magnitude more cynical and unbridled by conscience than Obama. I find the rights complaints about her as compelling as the lefts complaints about Trump.
The assertion here that they simply can’t be equivalent is just as vigorously declared by the other side.
Over 50% of Americans dislike each of them,and the supporters of each use exactly the same sentences to describe their detractors. Somehow all of America has fallen for one completely cynical and false narrative or another. And if you believe the other narrative you are stupid, or racist, or whatever.
Literally the same sentences, and the same hateful rhetoric to describe each other. Both sides egged on by the candidate to hate speech. Yes, they are equivalent, and neither represent an America I believe in.
I can’t tell you how many times I have been told a vote for Johnson just helps Hillary and im a fool for giving her that advantage even if I can’t stand Trump.
Despite the assertion of fact here, she is not guiltless. There is a reason she is the most investigated politician perhaps in history, and it’s not some right wing conspiracy. It’s because she exists on the ethical borders, crossing them regularly. Any other conclusion is a willful filtering of facts. That doesn’t indict all her supporters,
Despite the assertions elsewhere Trump is a racist, and some other things. There is a reason that he has essentially no actual support from the political class, and it isn’t because the Democrats always use the race card to smear the opposition, which is true. It is because he is willing to pander to the worst side of human nature and so he attracts the worst into the open. That doesn’t indict all of his supporters.
How anyone can vote for either is beyond me. How anyone can think a President with over fifty percent negatives is good for our country is beyond me.
My assessment at this point is that the contest has completely taken over from the content.
And, in my calmer moments, I pray fervently that whoever wins doesn’t also control Congress or we won’t recognize the country in four years.
The only way to win this game is not to play.
I think that the ‘unprecedented’ in the article can be taken as both positive and negative. I also think, given the way Native American tribes have been treated, not simply in the past, but in the present, some ‘unprecedented’ things ought to be done.
If folks simply dislike or even hate Clinton and don’t want to vote fo her, fine with me.
If folks just want to sit this one out altogether, fine with me.
But the idea that there is any kind of equivalence between Clinton and Trump just doesn’t fly.
You may find both candidates to be equally noxious persons. I’m not going to make any attempt to persuade you otherwise. We’re all entitled to our opinions.
But in the most basic and fundamental qualifications for office, there is no equivalence between the two.
Donald Trump has no qualifications, whatsoever, to be POTUS. None. Clinton, emphatically, does.
So I will be voting for Clinton.
There is not only nothing absurd about that, it’s the opposite of absurd.
WRS.
But also, Marty, you pretty much admit to using exaggeration for effect. But have you noticed, we never need to exaggerate about Trump, we only need to quote what he has said, and what his supporters have said and done? This really does away with any suggestions of equivalence, I would have thought.
I admit to no such thing, GftNC. As Russell pointed out I worded my comment carefully (tantamount) and nothing need be exaggerated about either of them.
And, once again, the same sentence from the Trump side. “They” exaggerate everything bad about him but “we” don’t have to exaggeratae how bad she is. She stole stuff from the White House for God’s sake, she let people die in Benghazi, she is STILL lying about the email server, she lied to the parents, ( the list is pretty long without including absurd things like who she had killed.)
Neither is temperamental lyrics fit for the job. Nor does her list of jobs count as qualifications. She didn’t really do them very well.
I wouldn’t begin to judge you as a person because you vote for her russell. I am sure you are making a conscientious choice based on your assessment of all the candidates.
But both GftNC and Sig are essentially criticizing me for not voting for Hillary because Trump. I think Sig said “you may think you are above it all” I can’t remember exactly how GftNC phrased it like I was shirking a duty by voting for Johnson. So I am trying to be as explicit as possible about my thought process that they are questioning, and noting I had to take criticism from Trump supporters for not voting for him because Hillary.
I am voting for someone after making a conscientious assessment of the candidates, Johnson is on the ballot in every state, he runs somewhere around Ten percent as of now, he runs between 15 and 25% in the southwest and mountain states, he takes votes from both major party candidates and if the vast majority of Americans had their way he would be in the debates which would mean all those numbers would likely go up. Voting for him is a vote for him.
FWIW, IMO voting for Johnson because you agree with Johnson more than the other folks is nothing but sensible.
The Greens are closer to my personal point of vie than the (D)’s on some issues, and I have voted (G) before. But this year I’ll be voting (D) because, amazingly enough, I can actually imagine Trump doing well in MA, and my personal first priority is to head that off.
People should use their vote to achieve whatever outcome they think is most important. If you think Clinton shouldn’t be POTUS, for whatever reason, you should vote for someone else.
Your vote, your business.
She stole stuff from the White House for God’s sake
http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-stole-white-house-furniture/
she let people die in Benghazi
this is a despicable accusation. you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
I love slopes, one of Hillary early claims of: I didn’t understand the rules on those darn gifts, I don’t recall being briefed on that.
“The only way to win this game is not to play.”
“I am voting for someone after making a conscientious assessment of the candidates, Johnson is on the ballot in every state, he runs somewhere around Ten percent as of now, he runs between 15 and 25% in the southwest and mountain states, he takes votes from both major party candidates and if the vast majority of Americans had their way he would be in the debates which would mean all those numbers would likely go up. Voting for him is a vote for him.”
Ironic that you should invoke one of the most famous examples of game theory while at the same time demonstrating willful ignorance of how game theory applies to elections in a two-party system.
She stole stuff from the White House for God’s sake, she let people die in Benghazi, she is STILL lying about the email server, she lied to the parents, ( the list is pretty long without including absurd things like who she had killed.)
Absurd things like stealing stuff from the White House? This is one I’ve only become aware of recently. I guess I don’t hear enough RW talk not to have missed it over the years.
What does “let people die in Benghazi” mean exactly? Was she supposed to foresee it and prevent it from happening? Was she supposed to swoop in from sky in a red cape and stop it?
I can’t really dispute the email thing at this point. I don’t know why she can’t answer the questions in a more direct manner. I can understand why she may have answered in a particular way before the investigation, because she may honestly not have known there was classified information in some extremely small percentage of her tens of thousands of emails, but more recently she seems to have been dissembling pointlesssly.
I don’t know what the story is regarding her parents. That sounds like a fun one. Please fill me in.
Oddly, I believe in striving to dismantle the two party system or redefine which two parties are considered THE two parties as its clear the two we have represent fewer Americans all the time.
I don’t have to vote for one or the other, just like Joshua didn’t have to pick a simulation. That ignorance word has been thrown around a lot in this thread.
Two quick points.
The parent thing Marty mentions is that some parents of people killed at Benghazi say Clinton lied to them. I don’t know any more– haven’t looked into it.
On Johnson, I wish a knowledgable anti- interventionist were in the debate. Our political discussions on issues are constrained by what the two parties say and that’s way too narrow. Unfortunately Mr. Aleppo is not the best candidate for this, even if some of his critics, including both one of Obama’s former ambassadors and a Romney advisor and some NYT writers were almost as ignorant as Johnson.
Somehow I read it as “her parents.” It looks like I was way behind in responding. I didn’t think I was on here that long before refreshing.
What does “let people die in Benghazi” mean exactly? Was she supposed to foresee it and prevent it from happening? Was she supposed to swoop in from sky in a red cape and stop it?
She was supposed to swoop into a House GOP caucus meeting, loaded up with power full fully-auto firearms and let them know that NONE of them would be leaving the room alive until they restored State Dept. security funding.
But she Didn’t. Even. Try.
NO CAPES! also, too.
She stole stuff from the White House for God’s sake, she let people die in Benghazi, ….
This is already absurd. It is also depressing, because it tells us how influential the RWNJ sites are.
This campaign has been sadly focused on personal attacks. I’d like to ask Marty, and McT, about some actual policy issues.
Who do you think will be more effective in dealing with the ME, and why?
Whose immigration policies do you favor, and why? Please avoid sloganeering and deal with facts and practicalities.
Who has a clearer picture of Russia and its intentions?
Is a 35% (or is it 45%?) tariff on Chinese imports a good idea?
Compare the tax plans of the candidates. I know McT hates Clinton’s proposal, and have no idea what Marty thinks. What about Trump’s ideas?
Is climate change a threat, or a Chinese conspiracy? Which candidate do you think will try to deal with it more intelligently?
I welcome additions from others. Focus should be on problems the next President will face, and who is likely to do better.
https://www.johnsonweld.com/issues
“Is a 35% (or is it 45%?) tariff on Chinese imports a good idea?”
“Is climate change a threat, or a Chinese conspiracy? Which candidate do you think will try to deal with it more intelligently?”
I think that just slapping on a tariff gets into problems with the WTO.
That said, I think that one *could* apply a “transport carbon tax” type of tariff, simply based on the estimated carbon emission of various types of imports, based on where they are coming from (Canada and Mexico get very low rates, SE Asia high rates), the mode of transportation (air vs. rail vs. ship vs. truck), and the overall weight.
So you’d get a “climate change” and “China tariff” twofer. And (almost certainly) avoid WTO problems. I don’t expect *any* candidate or party to get on board.
I have no interest in trying to decipher Trumps positions, day to day:
https://www.johnsonweld.com/issues
I admit to no such thing, GftNC
And yet:
After all that madness, you say this:
While martial law may be pretty far down the road, or even unnecessary, the empress President is not.
The final rhetorical flourish aside, I take this as admitting to using exaggeration for effect.
But you know what? Russell’s comment that your vote is your business is fair enough. These mirror-image arguments (she is as bad as he is and vice versa), or even the denial of them, get us nowhere. It’s just that to those of us seeing our country’s future hijacked by ill-informed, resentful (albeit poor and disadvantaged) people who usually don’t bother to concern themselves with the political process, but saw their chance to say “fuck you” to the usual suspects in Westminster this time even though it was against their own economic interests, and observing the aftermath of increasingly open racism, increasingly frequent racist attacks and now some racist murders, the Trump phenomenon (“I’m Mr Brexit”) looks depressingly familiar.
So byomtov’s suggestion of discussing actual policy issues is probably the sane and sensible way to go….
In response to the Count’s note at 9:47 yesterday, I checked. I’m move his notes, and two of Marty’s from this morning, out of the Spam folder.
If anyone else has things disappear, please say something so we can dig it out. Thanks
Thanks wj, I think.
The comments are much the same, since I kept re-writing as they disappeared down the chute.
So, Marty is Trump evil too, or just maladjusted?
You termed him “racist”, which you have done before, but that must be evil, mustn’t it?
I rather like byomtov’s suggestion of addressing specific policy proposals. Shall we turn that into a seperate thread of its own?
immediately after 9/11, when asked how things are looking around his building on Wall St, Trump’s response is to muse about the fact that his building was once again the tallest building in NYC.
https://twitter.com/ScottyLiterati/status/774895778817073152/video/1
but Clinton is a Clinton
Just saw footage of HRC half-collapsing before being got into a car after 9/11 occasion. It’s hard to believe there’s something seriously wrong with her, given that she has released what I understand to be a pretty comprehensive health report, but the optics, as you guys say, are not good.
I’m going to be out of radio contact for a few days in the wild west coast of Scotland from tomorrow, so hopefully this subject will all have blown over by the time I get back. (joke)
She has pneumonia
Pneumonia. Apparently diagnosed Friday, two days ago. Great.
Hindsight, I know, but wouldn’t it have been wiser to say so, and take a day or two off from campaigning – maybe attend the 9/11 ceremony and nothing else.
But no. Keep it a secret and end up looking bad and giving credence to all that health business. This is just infuriating. What are they thinking?
that they could keep it a secret, she would get better, and no one would ever know. Gambling and losing.
Knowing she’s got pneumonia, my policy preferences have changed and now I’m voting for Trump…
Because it is a minimum job requirement that the President never get sick. Anything else is simply unacceptable. Of course.
Because I’m now convinced she will not make it to inauguration I’ll vote for Tim Kaine.
wj,
It’s not a question of getting sick. It’s a question of how to deal with it in the midst of a campaign.
ugh,
What was the downside of admitting the illness?
“What was the downside of admitting the illness?”
America is full of shit is the downside.
But, I gotta say, she looks a little unsteady on her feet, so I’m gonna have to go for Heinrich Himmler in November.
He’s a little neurotic about train schedules, but Clinton is evil.
A clear choice.
the ghost of William Henry Harrison is rubbing its hands together in anticipation.
She’s lying. It’s the Ebola she has, transmitted by the African nigger Obama, who got it from his whore father’s genes and transmitted to her sexually by him while she was Secretary of State in charge of planning the murder of the Ambassador in Benghazi.
She’s going to go on a biting tour of Republican strongholds next week.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/09/hillary-clinton-has-pneumonia
I’m gonna have to go for Heinrich Himmler in November.
He’s a little neurotic about train schedules, but Clinton is evil.
That was Mussolini, I think, whose contribution to using herbal energy sources has been unfairly neglected.
If only we could figure out how to make trains run on thyme.
Regardless, I’m not saying this is a reason not to vote for HRC. It is a reason to say she made a strategic blunder and, IMO, an elementary one.
Trump is (I know, hard to believe) even worse than Ashcroft.
So in the worst case, precedent shall hold. It’s the American Way.
Get well soon, Madam President.
Pneumonia is nothing to be trifled with given how many resistant strands(?) are around these days.
Strangely, I cannot remember ever having to consciously met anyone who got it and mainly hear of it in context with infections in hospital.
my father has had it. he also picked up Legionaries in NYC last year. he’s prone to lung infections.
My father got pneumonia at 70. Played golf in the morning, wasn’t feeling great, decided to go to doctor before going on vacation the next day, admitted to hospital, never fully recovered. Bad strain. Not to be trifled with.
“Regardless, I’m not saying this is a reason not to vote for HRC.”
I know you aren’t. Just trying to predict the rest of the thread as accurately as possible.
I am nothing if not oregano.
She was trying to be a trooper, and not a Starship one, and stay on the campaign trail. She wanted to be a man about it, but because she is a woman, this will be viewed as strategic weakness of a lesbian kind.
I suspect she has already died, and Bill Clinton has already substituted a body double, so expect something along the lines of “Paul McCartney is Dead” leading up to November from the horseshit-purveyors.
Play “Hail To The Chief” backwards for clues. Also, if you anagram Matt Drudge’s whore of a mother’s maiden name, it spells “I killed Hillary, and that goes for her doppelganger, too.”
None of this will prevent Trump from naming Phyllis Schlafly as Under-Secretary of the Department of Vaginal Security and sitting her corpse in a chair at Cabinet meetings with a pound of salt stuffed in her mouth and wearing a sign around her neck that says, “Ask me anything, Donald, and then throw your voice for the answer.”
Marty will suss this out for us through the conning tower mounted on his head that picks up these vibrations by which he hopes to con us.
Yever notice how Phyllis Schlafly had nothing to say when Scott Baio called Clinton a cunt?
She liked it.
No sure that this will do the campaign any harm.
McCain’s health was an issue at the time because of his VP pick… President Tim Kaine doesn’t have quite such a terrifying resonance.
I know lots of people who’ve had pneumonia. The outcome seems to have been largely driven by the circumstances under which they got it (i.e. whether or not it was a complication arising from some other more serious health issue).
From the web:
“Pneumonia is acute inflammation of the lungs caused by infection. Initial diagnosis is usually based on chest x-ray and clinical findings. Causes, symptoms, treatment, preventive measures, and prognosis differ depending on whether the infection is bacterial, viral, fungal, or parasitic; whether it is acquired in the community, hospital, or other health care–associated location; and whether it develops in a patient who is immunocompetent or immunocompromised.”
So, is the right wing just nuts raising questions about her health or is the left so in the bag that they buy whatever BS HRC’s campaign chooses, when caught on video, to put out?
Or both?
The bacterial pneumonia is most common, making antibiotics the default treatment. Along with bed rest. Diagnosing pneumonia based on an exam without a chest x-ray seems a bit odd. What a doctor hears with a stethoscope is crackling/burbling which is not diagnostic of any one condition. Was there lab work? What did the doc base his diagnosis on and what were his orders?
These are fair questions.
(Why does McK know anything about pneumonia? Lung disease shows up a lot in litigation, cut my teeth on the asbestos docket, learned a lot of pulmonary medicine).
Acute dehydration, coupled with pneumonia, would seem to call for something a bit different than heading over the daughter’s apartment–for a 68 year old person, man or woman–followed by what the campaign is reporting to be a pretty quick bounce-back.
Here’s a game I’ll be we WON”T play–the ‘what if’ game. What if HRC really is BSing everyone about her health? What if the media, those in the tank and others are enabling this BS in spades?
If it is ever discovered that, indeed, we are were getting the same old BS we’ve been getting for years–and here is the question: will that materially affect support for her on the left or will the left rationalize this (it was just a blow job) the way they rationalize all of the other stuff?
Not saying she’s lying. Saying, what if she’s lying: if so, is that ok with everyone here?
it’s awesome that essentially the entire partisan campaign against Clinton is based on “it raises questions!”
Can’t see your problem, McKT.
You despise Clinton, so surely a chance of her quitting in favour of Kaine would be a good thing ?
Saying, what if she’s lying: if so, is that ok with everyone here?
If she’s lying about a serious illness that is life threatening in the long term, no. She should step down and have someone else be nominated (by whatever the hell process is in place for something like this in this stage of the game) as the Democratic candidate.
Otherwise, I guess I’m not sure what she’d be lying about.
HSH understands the question. It’s not a hard question. But, to avoid or minimize further parsing and evasiveness, I’ll refine it a bit more: If HRC and her campaign are *materially* misrepresenting/lying about her health, is that acceptable to those here?
Nigel, you are correct, if Kaine were the candidate, I wouldn’t sit this one out.
But, that’s not answering the question.
Looking into my crystal ball, I predict Cleek and Sapient will take me to the woodshed for even asking the question. Others will simply splutter their way around it. I will simply note “splutterer” when that happens.
Trump is (I know, hard to believe) even worse than Ashcroft.
When his opponent died (a couple of weeks before the election), Ashcroft suspended campaigning. Hard to picture Trump even considering something like that. More likely, a series of tweets about how obviously God is on his side.
“Here’s a game I’ll be we WON”T play–the ‘what if’ game.”
You’ve lost that bet already by virtue of starting the game.
I’ll bite. I think she is already dead; she was dead when her handlers threw her into the limo. Her next appearance will look suspiciously like Bill Clinton in a wig and a Mao pants suit.
There’s a blow job in there somewhere too.
We survived for multiple years with a President suffering from dementia/Alzheimer’s and his wife and Oliver North ruling the country with Ouija boards and diplomatic cakes, a game never engaged by a single conservative (too busy fellating St. Ronnie to engage) in the country and hardly questioned in any substantive by the media at the time.
Kaine will refuse to suck Republican dick and sill raise taxes a bit too, which is the truth conservatives really can’t handle.
If Kaine becomes the nominee, not a single conservative in Johnson’s dime bag will try to defeat the evil, murdering and slightly disheveled Trump by voting for Kaine.
So, is the right wing just nuts raising questions about her health or is the left so in the bag that they buy whatever BS HRC’s campaign chooses, when caught on video, to put out?
Depends on the questions. “Seizures?” not nuts – worse. Scurrilous nonsense, lies. Details about pneumomia, OK.
But drop the earnest concerns. Trump has disclosed nothing about anything. So if lack of transparency is disqualifying then why are the nutjobs backing Trump?
HSH, there is no process for her to step down at this point. She’s on the ballot, electors pledged (or, in some cases, required by law) to vote for her will be chosen. So she will be elected (or not, of course) — no other candidate is an option in the process.
The only thing she could do is resign immediately after becoming President. Which would make Kaine President, obviously.
I’ll refine it a bit more: If HRC and her campaign are *materially* misrepresenting/lying about her health, is that acceptable to those here?
no.
it’s also not acceptable to evaluate a person by the failings of your imaginary version of that person.
Depends on the questions. “Seizures?” not nuts – worse. Scurrilous nonsense, lies. Details about pneumomia, OK.
Why would seizures be worse? Or even a problem at all? Seriously.
They can be treated with medication. Mine have been quite successfully, so I speak from first hand knowledge here.
FDR, because he was a Democrat, was faking the crippling effects of polio:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/10/31/roosevelt.polio.reut/index.html
It’s not a hard question.
Well sure, but it’s a leading question. As an attorney, I should think you would know better.
I’ll refine it a bit more: If HRC and her campaign are *materially* misrepresenting/lying about her health, is that acceptable to those here?
I would politicians, especially Presidential candidates, not lie to the public about material relevant matters. In the present case, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with, let’s assume, the information that HRC is materially lying about her health. I guess my respect for HRC will do down. I am still going to vote for her (not that it matters, living in DC).
Perhaps that makes it “acceptable,” I don’t know.
I would *prefer* politicians…
Well sure, but it’s a leading question. As an attorney, I should think you would know better.
Actually, it’s not leading. It’s a hypothetical. It neither states facts nor suggests an answer. The respondent is free to answer as he/she chooses.
If she’s dying of lung cancer, I’d say she’s showing much resilience, the kind we need in a President.
https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/09/12/the-morning-in-three-photos/
That is one tough broad, as our next President Donald Trump would lie.
I’m thinking of all of the working class and middle class folks with pre-existing conditions who will have to lie about their medical conditions in job interviews and on health insurance forms once Trump and the band of Ryan murderers abolish Obamacare, much of Medicaid, and for sadistic good measure, abolish the law that hospitals must accept the uninsured into their emergency rooms for a quick look over before taxiing them downmarket.
Let me do it for ya:
Splutterer.
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with, let’s assume, the information that HRC is materially lying about her health. I guess my respect for HRC will do down. I am still going to vote for her
Perhaps compare it to the abundance of information that we have on Trump’s health before making a decision? Oh wait . . . .
Trump doesn’t release his health information because he doesn’t want us to know he has stage 4F CancerAIDS of the tongue. some people are saying.
“Trump doesn’t release his health information because he doesn’t want us to know he has stage 4F CancerAIDS of the tongue. some people are saying.”
It does raise questions….
Clinton should call in Trump’s Dr. Quackenbush for a second opinion:
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=photo+of+trump%27s+doctor&fr=mcafee&imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.dailykos.com%2Fimages%2F292283%2Fstory_image%2FTrumpsAnachronisticDoctor.jpg#id=-1&iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.dailykos.com%2Fimages%2F292283%2Fstory_image%2FTrumpsAnachronisticDoctor.jpg&action=click
Trump said today he is feeling great, in which that guy in the photos peered up Donald’s fundament and glimpsed our malignant stage IV future.
That’s the bad news of the day.
It means the country is terminal.
If HRC and her campaign are *materially* misrepresenting/lying about her health, is that acceptable to those here?
No. OK?
My point about seizures was simply that there have been a lot of BS comments about HRC’s health – including some about seizures – coming from ignorant fools. These have not been much repudiated by “serious” conservatives and have been picked up by the Trump campaign. (by “BS” I mean comments by people who don’t know medicine, based on youtube snippets.) Is that OK, McK? Acceptable?
Now, on the matter of concealment. Are those concerend bout Clinton’s health equally concerned with Trump’s, or do they just accept that he would be the healthiest President in history? Oh. And taxes?
Let’s be blunt here. No criticism of lack of transparency by Clinton is acceptable unless the critic treats Trump the same. Period. Clinton is too secretive, IMO. But Trump, on the evidence of taxes, medical records, the Trump Foundation, is demonstrably worse. So how about some basic fairness here?
Nigel, you are correct, if Kaine were the candidate, I wouldn’t sit this one out.
By which you mean you would be voting for Kaine?
given that the first the thing GOP House will do is draw up the articles of impeachment, a vote for Clinton is really a vote for Kaine…
What I’m wondering is how much of a story would this be if Trump and his minions hadn’t been questioning Clinton’s health in the first place, likely with no real basis, for however long leading up to this. I tend to think her campaign would have been more up-front about whatever health concerns she did have if it wouldn’t enflame what was already an established, even if false, narrative.
I tend to think it would have been better to have revealed the pneumonia diagnosis immediately, but the prior speculation made it a harder call. So I agree with byomtov, perhaps weakly, in that they made the wrong call, while also agreeing with ugh, that they simply gambled and lost.
I’ll add that I don’t think there was any intentional cover-up regarding the coughing fit(s) (was there more than one lately?) being attributed to seasonal allergies. My family’s been getting hammered by allergies over the last few weeks. I take allergy medication every day from late March until mid-October, and I’m still noticing it getting worse for me lately.
the wingnut ‘health’ myth accidentally worked out for them. i’m sure they’re all giggling about their luck and high-fiving each other, today.
Bill Clinton’s terrorism strategy led to 9/11. Hillary Clinton’s is the exact same thing.
Someone in the comments mentions Goebbels….
Thiessen is clearly too young to remember how Reagan handled Lebanon. or maybe too dumb.
By which you mean you would be voting for Kaine?
Yes.
Let’s be blunt here. No criticism of lack of transparency by Clinton is acceptable unless the critic treats Trump the same. Period. Clinton is too secretive, IMO. But Trump, on the evidence of taxes, medical records, the Trump Foundation, is demonstrably worse. So how about some basic fairness here?
Sure, I’ll come to a progressive lefty site and demand that folks be harder on Trump, because that really would get a conversation started.
That was snarky only because I think my snark, in this instance, has a nice ring.
There already is a consensus that, at a minimum, Trump is a full blown douche and completely incompetent. So, it seems redundant to mention that every time HRC comes up in a less than flattering way.
So, it seems redundant to mention that every time HRC comes up in a less than flattering way.
Well sure. Why is it that you’re continuing to raise the less flattering things about HRC that come up here though? I mean, it’s either her or Trump as President-elect in November, is it just you want to make sure that we feel bad about voting for her?
Or, put differently, since Trump is so manifestly worse than Clinton on just about every relevant topic, what good does it do to note that Clinton is not a Saint on Topic X?
There already is a consensus that, at a minimum, Trump is a full blown douche and completely incompetent. So, it seems redundant to mention that every time HRC comes up in a less than flattering way.
Yes and no. The problem is that, if it isn’t mentioned, it begins to sound like Clinton is the only one with problems. That isn’t, clearly, your intent. But after a while it sounds that way nonetheless.
The problem is that, if it isn’t mentioned, it begins to sound like Clinton is the only one with problems. That isn’t, clearly, your intent. But after a while it sounds that way nonetheless.
Ok, going forward, please consider that each and every comment of mine ends with the following statement, “Donald Trump is a fucktwit douche with really bad hair. Plus, he has a short dick.”
I think that covers it.
Who’s concerned with plumbing now, hmmmm? 🙂
Who’s concerned with plumbing now, hmmmm?
Fair and balanced, amigo, fair and balanced.
“Or, put differently, since Trump is so manifestly worse than Clinton on just about every relevant topic, what good does it do to note that Clinton is not a Saint on Topic X? ”
Because if we can disqualify her too then we can decide who the next choice is!
Out of curiosity, Marty, are there any Democrats you would vote for over Trump?
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/a-tale-of-two-hillarys-by-dennis-hartley.html
hsh, When did you stop beating your wife?
The question is, are there any Democrats I would vote for at all? Probably, but it isn’t Bernie, I might have voted for Kaine actually, though the more I see of him the happier I am to vote for Johnson and I am sure there are a few Dem Senators I would have comsidered.
This is pretty much a watershed for me. I haven’t disliked any candidate for President as much in my lifetime, either party, as I dislike both of Clintrump.
That plus the legitimacy of the Libertarian candidates really makes it hard for me to consider the question as posed.
If there were only two names on the ballot I would not vote in this one.
I really don’t see how my question was anything like the beating-your-wife thing. I was genuinely curious. Trump is the Republican nominee, not some off-the-all hypothetical.
If it is ever discovered that, indeed, we are were getting the same old BS we’ve been getting for years–and here is the question: will that materially affect support for her on the left or will the left rationalize this (it was just a blow job) the way they rationalize all of the other stuff?
Some will reconsider whatever support they currently give her, and some won’t.
Some will acknowledge the lack of candor and transparency, and some will deny it or rationalize it away.
Some who acknowledge it will support her nonetheless, because in their estimation she’ll still be the best option.
Just like, if it turns out that she has a perfectly treatable form of walking pneumonia, responds well to treatment, and is back on the campaign trail in a few days, the responses on the right will range from “glad she’s feeling better” to something not far off of the Count’s “she’s really dead” fantasms.
Everyone here knows all of this already.
This question has nothing to do with Clinton, it has to do with your perception that “the left” walks around with blinders on, like gullible children, accepting any bullshit that “their leaders” want to spoon out.
Though you’d catch us out this time, didn’t you!
It’s really kind of rude.
For the one millionth time, there is really no consensus among “the left” about much of anything. Least of all anything whatsoever to do with Hilary Clinton. Just read this freaking blog and that should be blindingly clear to you.
For the one millionth time, there is really no consensus among “the left” about much of anything. Least of all anything whatsoever to do with Hilary Clinton. Just read this freaking blog and that should be blindingly clear to you.
Exactly. Thanks, russell. The question is public policy. The rest? Chaff.
“I really don’t see how my question was anything like the beating-your-wife thing.”
I know you didn’t see it that way. Nor was I upset or offended. My response was so you might understand how I hear that question. I wouldn’t vote for Trump, so any Democrat I would vote for wouldn’t be over Trump, in my mind it would have to be over Johnson.
“as I dislike both of Clintrump”
So, Trump equally evil?
Here’s the truth from a Trump surrogate:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/daniel-tamburello-trump-clinton-parkinsons-battery-pack
Run with it, American shitheads.
So if she’s got a battery pack, is that evidence that she’s a cyborg?
“So if she’s got a battery pack, is that evidence that she’s a cyborg?”
Fembot. But not one of the hawt sexy ones, so clearly an abomination.
remember when Petraeus fainted during a hearing and it was the only thing talked about for a week?
no?
odd.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/15/general-david-petraeus-faint-afghanistan
“Here’s the truth from a Trump surrogate”
that didn’t take long.
On deplorables.
Deplorables from a different pov–
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-lives-of-poor-white-people
I think the racism should be condemned, but writing off tens of millions of people is a bad idea. And it’s a really bad idea coming from a presidential candidate.
Gosh, I didn’t remember Petraeus running for President.
Suggested in the Times today that Clinton ought to have followed Disraeli’s example and apologised:
“I should not have said that half of Trump’s supporters are a basket of deplorables. I am deeply sorry for this calumny, and to put the record straight am very happy to make it clear that half of his supporters are not a basket of deplorables…”
I read an article, perhaps several years ago, about the best way to go about changing another person’s mind about a subject on which you disagree (it was very good but I can’t seem to find it, I think it was on The Baffler for some reason but not sure).
IIRC the example was gay marriage and the article noted that accusing opponents of gay marriage of being homophobic might feel good and even be correct but it’s not going to move the needle in terms of convincing them they are wrong. It recommended, instead, understanding and (perhaps) sympathy for their point of view, while explaining why the balance of equities tips in favor of gay marriage for various reasons.
But hey, the internet is all about catharsis, so on with it! (Myself included)
Gosh, I didn’t remember Petraeus running for President.
do you remember him being in charge of a huge part of the largest military in the world?
I think the racism should be condemned, but writing off tens of millions of people is a bad idea. And it’s a really bad idea coming from a presidential candidate.
We’ve had this conversation before, and it’s important that we try to make people’s lives better, but poverty doesn’t excuse racism, and most of Trump’s supporters aren’t poor.
It’s very patronizing to assume that people can’t be decent to other people just because their own lives aren’t perfect.
Politico offers a tall glass of nonsense:
http://www.politico.com/gallery/2016/09/hydrated-hillary-9-times-clinton-quenched-her-thirst-002353?slide=0
Donald, the article you cited links to an article that says this:
“‘The results show mixed evidence that economic distress has motivated Trump support,” he writes. “His supporters are less educated and more likely to work in blue collar occupations, but they earn relative high household incomes, and living in areas more exposed to trade or immigration does not increase Trump support.” Rothwell adds that his “results do not present a clear picture between social and economic hardship and support for Trump. The standard economic measures of income and employment status show that, if anything, more affluent Americans favor Trump, even among white non-Hispanics. Surprisingly, there appears to be no link whatsoever between exposure to trade competition and support for nationalist policies in America, as embodied by the Trump campaign.'”
If people don’t want to be labeled “deplorables,” they shouldn’t be deplorable.
Aslo, Donald, this.
Election campaigns used to be about changing people’s minds. I have my doubts that this particular campaign is.
“Tens of millions of people” think that MOST of He, Trump’s supporters are deplorable. This election will be decided by which “tens of millions” turn out.
–TP
This question has nothing to do with Clinton, it has to do with your perception that “the left” walks around with blinders on, like gullible children, accepting any bullshit that “their leaders” want to spoon out.
Really, nothing to do with Clinton? I reread my question and I’m pretty sure it directly addresses Clinton(s), past and present. Moreover, I didn’t ask what the left thinks; the question is addressed to individuals, here at a largely left of center blog.
So, I see a straw man here, some mind reading and not actually addressing the question. Which is fine. I expected that and said so early on.
More right wing pontificating:
This past weekend makes a lot on the left uncomfortable. The *left* I’m referring to wants a Democrat in the White House badly and despises Trump. If that’s generalizing, shoot me. I think such a group exists and I think it’s pretty large. I call them Democrats. There is another lefty group as well. They are the Greens. For purposes of this election, there are two lefty groups–Dems and Greens. I think this is close enough for gov’t work.
And here is what is making this issue and questions like mine a source of discomfort: some number of ‘in the bag for HRC’ or ‘in the bag for anyone but Trump, so it’s HRC by default’ Lefties are asking themselves something on the order of “Shit–what if she really does have a chronic, serious health problem and what if it comes out that she’s been lying like hell about it from day one–that will give Trump the election. Holy Shit!!!”.
That’s what I’m thinking a lot of folks in the HRC camp–regardless of why they are in that camp–are thinking. So, is it mind-reading? Sure is. So what? That doesn’t make it wrong per se.
So, is it mind-reading? Sure is. So what? That doesn’t make it wrong per se.
it sure as shit doesn’t make it right either.
i’ve never met, heard or read any leftie assert that it’s a possibility that Clinton has been hiding a serious health problem. that is 100% right-wing partisan FUD.
oth ugh’s and donald’s links are good ones:
“I think the racism should be condemned, but writing off tens of millions of people is a bad idea. And it’s a really bad idea coming from a presidential candidate.”
On it’s face, yes. These people should be natural allies and constituents of the Democratic Party. But think of all that has changed over the past 40 years to drive lower class whites into Trump’s camp and mouth the words “cunt and bitch” toward her and “nigger” and “witch doctor” toward Barack Obama.
I’ll mention just one, leaving race aside. The total erasure of union jobs in places like Middletown, Ohio. More on that in a sec.
And I’ll point out that not one conservative here, or anywhere the fuck else, like some of the rest of us, has volunteered in comments over the past dozen years FIRST, before anyone else can get to it, that that sort of behavior toward a woman and a black man is damnable behavior.
Not even evil. Crickets.
Maybe Hillary took it personally and her outburst was truth, not a lie, but of course any truth uttered by her is ascribed to her cunthood and bitchhood, a little like the way uppity black and white women among poor whites and blacks (not confined to the poor) are treated by their “victimized” men when they speak up.
Black rage, of course, is jumped on immediately and condemned with generalized sociological explanations of how they were all raised wrong.
I was born in Middletown, Ohio (the setting of J.D. Vance’s book “Hillbilly Elegy” Hospital in 1951. My Mom and Dad moved shortly thereafter because his job with Armco Steel, salesman, demanded it. But my grandfather (I’ve spoken here of him on occasion was a retired career draftsman for Armco Steel (died in 1970) which was at the time and for years afterward the third or forth largest steel company in the U.S., behind U.S. Steel, Bethlehem, and Youngstown Sheet and Tube, located at the far corner of Ohio from Middletown. My great uncle, his brother, also worked for Armco, as most of the town did, outside of the merchants. All white collar however.
My mother was the Armco President’s executive secretary as age 22 for a time before she met my Dad in that very office and they married.
By happenstance, my father’s uncle was Frank Purnell, Chairman of the Board of Youngstown Sheet and Tube and during his heyday visited with Presidents FDR and Truman, both of whom he hated, in the White House, so my family heritage is a taste of the various class strata in that part of the country.
My paternal grandfather worked in some white collar capacity for Y S&T too.
My Dad went on to become a very successful salesman for Armco and was in line for very high executive positions with the company when his life was cut short by diabetes at age 45 in 1966. I was 14, but he had put us in the upper middle class, where we stayed by hook or crook.
Here’s the thing: In Middletown, which I visited twice a year all my life while my grandparents were living, EVERYONE I came into a contact among my relatives and friends when I was a kid was a dyed-in-the-wool racist. The men used the term “nigger” like it was any other noun and the women, like my grandmother would go all sotto-voiced as they delicately explained from behind a hand shielding their mouths when the subject arose that it was “the blacks” who are the entire problem.
Martin Luther King was a Commie who should have been shot. Funny, how that came true.
Look, I adored all of those people and I still do. I visit the Middletown cemetery to meditate over their graves every couple of years on my way back to Pittsburgh. My Dad and now my Mom are buried in Youngstown with my Dad’s family.
Me, I joke that I want my son to spread my ashes surreptitiously in center field in Yankee Stadium, but I am going to probably end up in a high valley in the Rocky Mountains just below tree line. I wonder if I will care.
But, here’s the other thing. All of them hated the unions, which were made up almost exclusively of working class whites, whose heirs I presume are now meth-head hillbillies, given the links.
My father’s family in Youngstown hated the unions too. The unions were very rough back then. So were the thugs my Great-Uncle Frank Purnell hired to bash their heads in.
My paternal grandmother, a sweet, lovely woman, would lift her skinny buttocks out of the overstuffed chair and leave the room when FDR’s name came up, and this was years after he was dead, just barely succeeding in not hawking up a big clot of phlegm on the off-white wall to wall carpeting.
The point is that the blacks on the bad side of the tracks were completely off the social radar, not even in the mix. They were less than human. But there was always this divide too between the middle and upper class whites and the working class whites.
They agreed with each other about the “niggers’.
But the whites on top hated every stride the working class whites made into the middle class.
I generalize for brevity.
One other fact. I have a brother, who despite being afforded all of the perks of an upper middle-class upbringing by my Dad and then my Mom, is to this day a bitter racist (yeah, the niggers!) and at times an anti-Semite despite one of his best friends and his attorney (which my brother required the services of umpteen times when he was a young asshole) being Jewish.
You don’t want to get him started, especially regarding taxes. To my father’s and mother’s credit, we were not raised in an overtly racist household, by any means.
So, where does that come from?
But get this, he’s not a Trumpster. To the extent that he engages politically, he speaks fairly well of Obama when the latter is not giving it all away to the blacks.
I suppose the drug use (well, into his 40s), the alcohol abuse, the severe heart attack and the pharmaceutical regimen he is forced to follow as a result have fried his synapses.
But, see that’s doesn’t explain it either. He was nuts before all of that.
He just thinks he is privileged because he is white, no matter how he has fucked up his own life.
So we have working class whites and working class blacks going at it, like f*cking always, while the rest of us are just happy they aren’t coming after US as we do spit takes over some measly food stamps.
That’s what I’m thinking a lot of folks in the HRC camp–regardless of why they are in that camp–are thinking. So, is it mind-reading? Sure is. So what? That doesn’t make it wrong per se.
Wrong? That you’re mind-reading? Or wrong that Hillary’s supporters are secretly worried that she’s dying?
I’m as worried about Hillary’s health as I’ve always been – she’s in her late 60’s, and she’s mortal. I’m not worried that she has a serious medical condition that she’s been hiding. I hope she recovers, is elected, and serves out her term (at least one). But Tim Kaine is about the most competent choice to replace her that I can think of. So, mostly, I just hope she wins.
FDR was crippled by polio. He hid the extent of his disability, to the point of enduring excruciatingly painful leg braces so he could be photographed standing and walking.
Didn’t stop him from being one of the greatest Presidents ever.
I’ll repeat what I’ve heard elsewhere: Hillary as a brain-in-a-vat; Hillary bedridden; Hillary in a freaking coma would still be not only a better President but an all-round better human being than Donald Trump.
IOW: I do not give a fine feathered fart about PneumoniaGhaziGate.
“Shit–what if she really does have a chronic, serious health problem and what if it comes out that she’s been lying like hell about it from day one–that will give Trump the election. Holy Shit!!!”.
You are absolutely right, speaking for my own self.
That’s precisely what you are afraid of too. It’s akin to what you and Marty and lots of folks felt as Bush, Kasich and the other what’s-their-names were knocked off one-by-one in the Republican primary.
Our “Holy shit!!” is merely quoting you guys from a few months ago.
And, yes, if she is lying about her medical condition, I will still vote for her over Trump or Johnson.
it sure as shit doesn’t make it right either.
Of course it doesn’t and I’ve been careful not to go beyond asking the ‘what if’ question. It’s not an unfair question given recent events and if it turns out her supporters have been played, that’s a huge negative for her and a huge plus for Trump. It’s already a plus for Trump.
As for your not having heard anyone on the left express the concern I raise, I think that is precisely the subtext of Axelrod et al’s calls for health transparency and related comments.
So, it isn’t just me.
Sapient, it is precisely because she is 68 and mortal that health matters. Hers matters, Trump’s matters. I hope she recovers and I hope that whatever is going on, if anything, gets fixed and that Trump doesn’t win by default.
But, she is who she is. People are rightly concerned about how forthcoming she’s been and there is a real concern that the other shoe has yet to drop.
I think that is precisely the subtext of Axelrod et al’s calls for health transparency and related comments.
Axelrod was pushing the “most press conferences and chumming-up to reporters” line. he wasn’t insinuating that she’s hiding a chronic medical condition.
there is a real concern that the other shoe has yet to drop
behold the power of confirmation bias.
I’m worried more that she will have a major medical problem that will come to the fore soon after she is elected … fatal bullet wounds from the weapons of deplorables armed by the Republican Party.
The rhetoric is now fully in place for bloodshed against her and liberals. There is no turning back. It’s baked into the cake. The cards have all been played except the trump.
Even the fucking conservative elected officials in YOUR Party. But go ahead, disown that too.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/matt-bevin-blood-shed-clinton-victory
But stay neutral, guys. Keep your heads down and above it all. Everyone will try to remember you don’t own any of this.
The rest of us are going to kill each other and then you neutral survivors can live in world free of Obamacare.
there is a real concern that the other shoe has yet to drop
McK, what’s your estimate for the probability that Clinton has a serious, life-threatening illness that she’s hiding?
I lost another long comment about my personal history in Middletown, Ohio (see Donald’s very good link) and nearly my entire family’s employment history with Armco Steel, highlighted therein.
I probably accidentally got rid of it myself, like the cook dropping an entire hot-out-of-the-oven lasagna face down on the way to the table, but maybe it’s in the spam folder, which might be apt as well.
wj: fixed. No idea why these are going into the spam bucket.
I think the racism should be condemned, but writing off tens of millions of people is a bad idea. And it’s a really bad idea coming from a presidential candidate.
I agree, but I’m not so sure that’s what she did, or at least that’s not what she intended to do. (I haven’t yet followed any of the links others provided in response, so this may be redundant. If that’s poor blog etiquette, I will gladly accept any and all condemnation that comes my way.)
Here’s the full quote with my added emphasis:
I think what she intended to do was acknowledge an existing perception of Trump voters that is negative and based primarily on the “basket of deplorables” (i.e. racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.), but not to reinforce it, rather to temper it. I think she’s saying, “Yes, some number of people fit this description, but far from all of Trump’s supporters, and they aren’t representative of the character of this nation. Don’t leave all of these people behind, because they don’t deserve that.”
It was a bad choice of words, at the very least, but I don’t think she was writing off tens of millions of Americans.
Election campaigns used to be about changing people’s minds. I have my doubts that this particular campaign is.
Perhaps this one should be as well. But it has been pretty clear since at least early spring that it is not. Instead, it is going to be all about turning out supporters to vote.
McK, what’s your estimate for the probability that Clinton has a serious, life-threatening illness that she’s hiding?
Close to zero. Most people her (our) age have something going on. I’ve got a bit of blockage, my blood sugar runs a little high sometimes, I’m an ex-smoker and I swill at least a half bottle of wine a day.
HRC’s exposure–IF ANY–is that she has a manageable but chronic condition that she’s failed to disclose and has, in effect, denied having. If that is the case, she takes a double hit: more lying and right wing partisans can make the condition out to be worse than it is (Why would she hide it!!! It must be worse than she admits!!! She lies all the time!!!), all to Trump’s advantage.
My estimate for a chronic but manageable condition: one in three that it exists. A guess based on her age and her pace of life since forever.
Yes. Let’s discuss anything but the issues.
Officeholders hiding or not being fully forthcoming about their health issues has a long history.
Frankly, this is unbelievable.
and what Coates wrote.
JFC
It was a bad choice of words, at the very least, but I don’t think she was writing off tens of millions of Americans.
I agree with this. I think her description of Trump supporters is fair as far as it goes. Of course, I don’t expect her to say, “A lot of his supporters can’t stand the idea of me being president because of who they think I am and they are not deplorable, they just don’t like me. OTOH, I probably have supporters who can’t stand the idea of DT as president.”
Everyone read hairshirt’s full Clinton quote again:
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.
“But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
In the first paragraph, she deplores all those who Marty and MCXT deplore in their very own conservative movement, despite the fact that their choices in the Republican primary would have their operatives appealing to those very racist base fucks for the general election had they won. Despite that full agreement, somehow hers is a lie, and their deploring (without, I remind us, using the word evil) is some sort of high honest integrity-filled gesture of partisan balance.
The second paragraph could have been written by Marty, except you know, for that awful word “government”.
But never the fuck mind.
I’m going to own Clinton and all her failures.
Others own jackshit.
I’ve got a bit of blockage, my blood sugar runs a little high sometimes, I’m an ex-smoker and I swill at least a half bottle of wine a day.
It’s the wine that’s keeping you going, McKinney. It’s supposed to do wonders.
It’s too bad for me that I hate the taste…. But face it, the best thing done with juice from grapes is Welch’s — now that should start a firestorm of comments!
“It was a bad choice of words, at the very least, but I don’t think she was writing off tens of millions of Americans.”
This is just spin. She called 40 million people racist, misogynistic, homophobic and xenophobic plus. There is no context where this was anything but trying to reinforce her best advantage, white people feeling bad for supporting him and not wanting to be one of those forty million.
The rest was like Trump saying that there were some good guy immigrants too. Despite the fact that I could have written it.
Oh and Coates is ass, his links don’t support his point and well he’s just an ass. When he stops calling white people racist then maybe some of them will listen to him. Except when he wants get paid for being black.
On trasparency: no 1040, no 1600.
The Basket of Deplorables may not agree.
On issues: what issues?
Are birthers, or global warming denialists, even living in the same mental universe in which “issues” can be argued about?
On pigheadedness: McTX and I are both pigheaded.
I voted for Bernie in the primary, but I have always been as sure that I would vote for HRC in the general as McTX has been that he would not. I hold no illusion that I could ever change McKinney’s mind on that score. But he seems more optimistic the other way.
On candidate health: dead is better than sick.
I have heard people say they will write in Ronald Reagan, is all I’m saying.
–TP
She called 40 million people racist, misogynistic, homophobic and xenophobic plus.
Just to be clear, she didn’t say that they were all of them all of those things. Just that they all were at least one of them. It’s real easy to be, for example, mysogynistic, without being homophobic or racist either one.
She called 40 million people racist, misogynistic, homophobic and xenophobic plus.
she said ‘half’ of Trump supporters are one of those things.
want to see some charts?
http://www.vox.com/2016/9/12/12882796/trump-supporters-racist-deplorables
“Except when he wants get paid for being black.”
He’s not paid for being black, but he is on a stipend for being evil.
“The rest was like Trump saying that there were some good guy immigrants too.”
“They are rapists”
“Immigrants love me”
Batshit, Betty, Batshit.
Which of those charts shows that any of those people are racist? Or misogynistic? or homophobic? I have always had a problem with xenophobia as most people really are that.
The fear of no longer being able to realistically look down on the “other” is a big resentment driver, it seems.
“It’s very patronizing to assume that people can’t be decent to other people just because their own lives aren’t perfect.”
That’s where criticizing racism comes in. You denounce Trump’s constant appeals to bigotry without going that extra step further and using a term like “deplorables”. This isn’t hard. You can criticize bad behavior of some poor black people without going one step further and referring to them as, say, superpredators.
What those polls show is that right wingers are more prejudiced against or inclined to stereotype blacks than left wingers, but both sides have/do more than they should.
They also show that Democrats are in the minority when it comes to Muslim immigration.
Can someone link me to the Coates piece being referenced? I always like a little TNC to up my blood pressure. He had an interesting piece in the Atlantic yesterday on OJ Simpson. Made some good points, too. Some points I find tendentious, to say the least, but some valid points as well.
This is just spin.
Actually, it’s what I thought after reading the whole thing, which was different from what I thought after hearing about it. I read the whole quote, and thought, “Hey, I don’t think she was trying to say what I originally thought she was trying to say.”
It’s very much like a spat my wife and I had the weekend before last. We were at a the neighbors’ having a few drinks and discussing some of the neighborhood politics, involving some amount of high school-ish bullying by middle-aged people and a lot of judgment being passed on situations that aren’t really anyone else’s business.
In pointing out the sort of judgments people are willing to make, I mentioned the sort of judgments someone might pass regarding a situation my wife has been in, where she has to tolerate some BS for the benefit of our kids. I said that someone might judge her (wrongly! – which I thought was understood) as being phony for doing that.
She took it that I was saying she was phony, even after we’ve discussed this situation several times and I’ve always agreed with her approach. That didn’t go over very well, and there was enough alcohol in us that she wasn’t really capable of receiving my explanation, and I wasn’t really capable of providing it clearly.
We patched it up the next day with (somewhat) clearer heads, but I was spending some quality time on the sofa that night.
The long and short of it is that Clinton’s statement was like my saying, “Someone could say you were being phony,” with “if they were judging you on something that was none of their business and about which they didn’t actually understand the circumstances” only being an unstated implication, which I wrongly thought would be readily understood.
There’s a reason she said, “to just be grossly generalistic, you could” rather than simply starting off with “Half of….” And why does she then go on to caution people against writing off all of Trump’s supporters?
As has been mentioned, you think Trump is a complete douchebag, don’t you, Marty? Don’t you think at least some of his supporters, perhaps far too many for comfort, like some of his douchebaggery? Maybe some of them like all of it? What does it consist of? Is this something Clinton made up, or is it something she noted that many people have been saying?
BTW, as a private person I refer to all sorts of racists in nasty ways sometimes. In this very threadI mentioned how Clinton panders to a different type of bigot when condemning BDS–the kind of bigot who thinks Palestinians have no right to use nonviolent protest methods and that the very tactic makes one an antisemite. Pure, grade A bigotry right there, that is. Pandering to bigots by politicians is something that should always be called out, no matter who does it. But it isn’t.
However, in condemning politicians for their pandering it’s not a good idea to start making sweeping statements about large groups of people and it’s particularly not a good idea for someone who is a politician to do this, even if their own record is sparkling clean.
Clinton obviously realized herself she made a mistake in generalizing. I take her apology to be sincere. Defenders should be saying she was wrong to put it that way, but she was clearly right that Trump is doing his best to make bigotry acceptable in public life.
Coates in general:
http://www.theatlantic.com/author/ta-nehisi-coates/
Except when he wants get paid for being black.
yeah, right. but then again, we already have assholes that get paid for being white…Ross Douthat, David Brooks, Tommy Friedman….just for starters. I’d throw Dowd in there, too, but she seems to be in her own private bizarre universe.
I have no fear or hatred for Canadians.
The charts? If we had em, you’d dismiss them out of hand.
Breitbart must have those charts to guide its hiring decisions. Trump seems to know just who these people are with the charts.
Where are the charts showing 73% of German nationals in 1937 were Jew-haters?, defendant attorneys at Nuremberg wanted to know?
See, I just made that up, chartless I am. Must be a lie?
I mean, Nuremberg depended entirely on anecdotal evidence, except for the charts Brietbart’s antecedents used to clear the ghettos, which were kept meticulously, as Trump trumpets when he says he knows “exactly who these people are” on preparation for deporting eleven million human beings, just as a starter course for the people he is going to murder and Clinton is not going to murder.
Batshit, Betty, Batshit! Approaching evil, but definitely Batshit, Betty.
Defenders should be saying she was wrong to put it that way, but she was clearly right that Trump is doing his best to make bigotry acceptable in public life.
No, you should be saying that if that’s what you believe. I believe that racists are responsible for Trump, and for the tea party Republicans, and to a large extent Republicans in general, not necessarily vice versa, If people don’t want to be called deplorable, they need to stop being deplorable.
” perhaps far too many for comfort, like some of his douchebaggery? ”
I don’t think very many of them think of themselves as any of those things. Some do, the David Dukes and gang. I think he is a douche in, well let me count the ways. I don’t assign any of that douchery to any of his supporters aside from a small cadre of the aforementioned. I suspect those measure, at the most, at a few million.
The most common thing I hear among his supporters is show me something that says he is racist. Which is problematic, if you let Hillary caveat her statement (which I don’t) then you have to accept his caveat (which I don’t) that “there are some fine people too” that never gets added to the end of the rapist quote. They don’t believe he is against Hispanics, he is against law breaking illegal immigrants. To them that’s like saying he is against home invaders.
You may note that I didn’t question Islamophobes. Importing Muslims, especially from radicalized countries, seems like a bad idea to a bunch of people. I was watching a show this weekend where the defense to that was “we already do a good job of screening”. Sooooo, its racist (religionist?)to demand heightened screening because we already do heightened screening?
So no, I don’t think by and large most of his supporters are douchebags.
“Shit–what if she really does have a chronic, serious health problem and what if it comes out that she’s been lying like hell about it from day one–that will give Trump the election. Holy Shit!!!”
I’m not worried about her health. I am concerned about the way she handled the pneumonia situation.
However, I will make you a wager.
Both candidates have said they will release detailed medical information very soon. I will bet dollars to doughnuts that Clinton’s release will be more detailed, more forthcoming by far than Trump’s.
Indeed, I think it plausible that Trump’s “release” will not come from his regular physician, or from any physician we would expect to present an honest and complete picture. I think it will be effectively empty. Are righties as worried as you think lefties are?
I found the charts!
http://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/09/13/what-would-president-trumps-shake-up-look-like/
Nixon sought and kept the charts. But he is still above the shit line Marty drew for Presidential candidates in his lifetime, above Trump/Clinton.
Not only NOT evil, but … acceptable? Maybe Marty was born yesterday.
There will be killing. It will be necessarily inexact because Breitbart et al won’t share their mailing lists, so we can target the specific millions who fucking need it.
As to Clinton’s bigotry against Palestinians, liberals took LBJ down, and we can do the same to Clinton if we need to.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are going to love Trump, on balance.
Two examples of TNC bullshit below. He’s often a fairly keen observer and reporter of facts, but then he spins he sees into his own black-as-victim-centric universe where there is only black and white and never, ever any gray.
Indeed, what Breitbart understood, what his spiritual heir Donald Trump has banked on, what Hillary Clinton’s recent pillorying has clarified, is that white grievance, no matter how ill-founded, can never be humiliating nor disqualifying. On the contrary, it is a right to be respected at every level of American society from the beer-hall to the penthouse to the newsroom.
The true crime was endangering white consciousness.
White consciousness. Jesus. What a douche.
The most common thing I hear among his supporters is show me something that says he is racist. Which is problematic
Are you suggesting that the whole Birther thing was anything but racism, pure and simple? Yeah, there were lots of attempts to rationalize it. But nothing that would stand an instant’s look.
I think it plausible that Trump’s “release” will not come from his regular physician
Does Trump even have a regular physician? Is there any evidence at all to support such an assumption? After all, the guy who whipped out Trump’s previous immitation of a medical report clearly isn’t.
Apparently,
middle class incomes had their fastest growth on record last year.
I blame Obama.
P.S. Ugh, thanks for the link.
Tex,
You deny white grievance exists?
Just look at the spittle flecked response to a guy sitting down during a song.
If it’s business as usual, Trump will have a regular physician as soon as he can get one to sign a legally binding agreement that forbids saying anything negative about Trump’s health.
White consciousness. Jesus. What a douche.
w.c. doesn’t exist, or he’s a douche for mentioning it?
No problem. I think the problem with the two quotes from TNC (if any) is that they’re sufficiently amorphous as to be meaningless, more particularly the second one.
I think what perhaps he is getting at is a subset of the inability to have a rational discussion on race in this country, and that there is a strong view of certain whites of wanting to put their fingers in their ears and say “lalalalalalala I can’t hear you” whenever the subject is brought up (hence his references to Trayvon and Prof. Gates).
However, I will make you a wager.
Both candidates have said they will release detailed medical information very soon. I will bet dollars to doughnuts that Clinton’s release will be more detailed, more forthcoming by far than Trump’s.
I like betting on stuff but not on DT or HRC. My bet is that both sides will claim *their* disclosure was the fuller, more detailed and both sides will find shit in the other’s disclosure that will have them going after each other hammer and tong. That’s my bet.
We’re less than two months from E-Day. The whack-doodleness this year is truly a sight to see. Very depressing.
So no, I don’t think by and large most of his supporters are douchebags.
Thanks for answering a question I didn’t ask.
My bet is that both sides will claim *their* disclosure was the fuller, more detailed and both sides will find shit in the other’s disclosure that will have them going after each other hammer and tong. That’s my bet.
haha. I bet you a box of California cabernet (from which I partake of my usual nightcaps)that the Trump medical report will be a no show, just like his tax returns.
BTW, as a private person I refer to all sorts of racists in nasty ways sometimes. In this very threadI mentioned how Clinton panders to a different type of bigot when condemning BDS–the kind of bigot who thinks Palestinians have no right to use nonviolent protest methods and that the very tactic makes one an antisemite. Pure, grade A bigotry right there, that is. Pandering to bigots by politicians is something that should always be called out, no matter who does it. But it isn’t.
This may be at least in part because not many people are as up on these issues as you are. I know I’m not. I might agree wholeheartedly with your assessment, but I don’t know enough of the details to have a strong opinion one way or the other.
Taken at face value, without knowing much about the particulars of the BDS movement, I’d say it is bigotry to assume that any pushback against Israeli policy that hurts Palestinians is simply anti-Semitism, as though there can’t be any legitimate concern for Palestinians.
Of course, there may be more to it, since I’m largely ignorant about it, like a lot of other people.
This is rich.
While my opponent calls you deplorable and irredeemable,” he said in Asheville, North Carolina, “I call you hard-working American patriots who love their country and want a better future for all our people.”
But his rally was interrupted several times by demonstrators and, at one moment, brief violence. As several protesters were being escorted out by security, a man in the crowd grabbed a male protester around the neck and then punched him. He then slapped at a woman being led out. The Trump supporter was not ejected by security.
The celebrity businessman talked through the scuffle but cracked after the disturbance, “Is there any place more fun than a Trump rally?”
“Thanks for answering a question I didn’t ask.”
I missed your point then.
“not actually addressing the question”
actually i very specifically answered your question, see the “some would and some wouldn’t” part.
and yes, Clinton does make a brief appearance in your question as the subject of a hypothetical conjecture, but what was actually asked was what her supporters would do.
Not Clinton, but folks who support her.
And actually not even them, but some figment known as “the left”.
If people don’t think Clinton should be POTUS, then they shouldn’t vote for her. Nobody’s gonna make you.
As far as I can tell, it’s either gonna be Clinton or Trump, and that being so, it’s a no-brainer.
If you can’t vote for either, there’s always Johnson or Stein, if you’re willing to spend your vote on making a statement.
Just out of curiosity – McTx you voted for Bush in 2004, correct? If so, why and how is Hillary so much worse you couldn’t vote for her?
I missed your point then.
I didn’t ask you if most of Trump’s supporters were douchebags. I asked if a disturbingly large number were (or at least found appeal in Trump’s douchebaggery, which I guess is sort of the same thing).
What I’m getting at here is that you seem to agree that there is a significant number (not most) of Trump supporters who support him based, at least in part, on at least one of the “deplorable” categories.
‘The celebrity businessman talked through the scuffle but cracked after the disturbance, “Is there any place more fun than a Trump rally?”‘
Well, if the protestors would start behaving as do George Zimmerman/Ted Nugent/Ann Coulter/Donald Trump Republicans who are armed at all times, preferably with fully automatic weapons, and shoot and kill anyone point blank in what they call pure self defense for physically assaulting them, then yes, THAT would be more exciting.
But that’s not how liberals behave, the pussies.
That’s gotta change. Until Clinton is elected, and she issues an executive order that any conservative deplorables, who share a white consciousness (even the few black and Hispanic assholes among the deplorables share the consciousness) of which none of the rest of us are invited into the club, and who interrupt and/or raise a hand or wear a weapon to any function she or any other Democrat attends in the country during her Administration are gunned down on the spot, all of the excitement will be monopolized by conservatives like Trump, who I now conclude, are not evil, nut merely unkempt.
Then hunt their mothers, their children, and their pets down too.
It’s the only thing they understand.
yesserrie….no white grievance here!
Mike Pence, who I would not vote for even if trump came down with a fatal case of lead poisoning:
Pence also refused to say whether he would call former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who has embraced Trump’s presidential campaign, “deplorable.”
So, Trump NOT evil.
Now, Duke, NOT to be deplored by a candidate for Vice President of the United States, for fear of offending 40 million deplorables.
Got it.
He says he’s not in the business of name-calling:
1995: http://fair.org/extra/language-a-key-mechanism-of-control/
I bet you a box of California cabernet
How big is the box?
McTx you voted for Bush in 2004, correct? If so, why and how is Hillary so much worse you couldn’t vote for her?
You’re asking me to recover fairly discrete thought processes from 12 years ago. I can’t do that very well. I generally remember a broad range of negative thoughts about Kerry (the Christmas Eve in Cambodia “seared in my brain” that actually never happened comes to mind) and I remember not despising Bush in any particular way at the time. I still don’t despise him. I think he was way over his head, and this was particularly evident in second term.
For those who were expressing a burning desire for a chart, here you go:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/09/daily-chart-8
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/intersections/201602/who-thumps-trump-new-polls-answer-is-beyond-the-pale
“What I’m getting at here is that you seem to agree that there is a significant number (not most) of Trump supporters who support him based, at least in part, on at least one of the “deplorable” categories. ”
I thought the statement most are not douchebags answered this. A “significant” number is pretty indeterminate, so less than 20% for sure.
Except Muslims. Then it may be 80%. As far as I can tell every Trump supporter I have met agrees that, at a minimum, heightened screening for Muslims is not only ok but not doing it is practically treason.
A “significant” number is pretty indeterminate…
Whatever you think the number might be, do you think it’s significant, given what we’re talking about here? If we were talking about what percentage of Trump supporters liked vanilla ice cream, I’m guessing it would have to be a pretty high number to be significant, if it would even be significant at 100%. Conversely, if we we’re talking about how many Trump supporters had murdered their parents, I’m guessing it wouldn’t have to be a very high percentage at all to be significant.
Do you think a disturbingly high number of Trump supporters hold objectionable views? (Or, perhaps another way of asking is, do you think Trump’s campaign has revealed that a disturbingly large percentage of Americans do – more than you would otherwise have thought?)
I’m not totally sure what you’re point is about Muslims. When someone says we’re screening people coming into the country for ties to terrorism, it doesn’t mean that they’re scrutinizing Muslims. It means they feel as though, if someone is a known terrorist, they’ve very likely to identify that person as such, rather than “We’re checkin’ all them Muslims! Just check the Christian box and you’re in!”
Just for the record, in 1980ies (West) Germany about 1 in 7 professed significant anti-Jewish sentiments. About the same percentage claimed to firmly belief in witches (in the sense of women with actual magical powers not neo-pagan wannabes or a certain variety of feminists).
Each group (discounting for the likely strong overlap) would thus have been about 10 million people.
Given the size of the US population and US history I would be very surprised, if the added-up number of islamo/homo/latino/gyno*/chromo**-phobes was as low as just 40 millions.
For comparision just look at the numbers of evolution-deniers or outright Young Earth Creationists. Tiny percentages (and these two are not) add up to millions, if you have to deal with about 320 millions*** as baseline.
*sexists, **racists ***likely not up-to-date number.
Apropos of nothing here, except Islamphobia, this is a quote dated 9/10 2001 from a market analyst, Jeffrey Saut of Raymond James whom I read regularly. He reminded us today of that gruesomely prescient quote:
“It was fifteen years ago on Monday (9-10-01) when I used Obi-Wan Kenobi’s quote from Star Wars, which read, “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.” The quote was used because, since August of 2001, the stock market should have been going up and it wasn’t! I miss the 16 friends I lost the next day.”
Did the world markets know about 9/11, since conservatives believe the all-seeing markets discount everything. If so, who? How many of those who knew what was coming 24 hours from that pronouncement were Americans not of the Muslim persuasion or other westerners steeped in western civilization.
Less than 20%? Nineteen percent would be acceptable under current standards, if we count only douchebags. But what of the asshats, fascists, c”cksuckers, and psychopaths who populate the world’s financial markets?
I’ll bet it’s more than 20% if we don’t confine ourselves only to douchebags.
She called 40 million people racist, misogynistic, homophobic and xenophobic plus.
Draw the Venn diagram of people who are racist, or misogynist, or homophobic, or xenophobic.
There are about 220 million people in the US who are eligible to vote. If you don’t think you can find 40 million of them who fit into one of those buckets, you’re not living in the same USA that I am.
40 million is 18% of the eligible voters.
Of those who fit in their somewhere, what do you think the likelihood is that they support Trump, as opposed anyone else running?
It is what it is. Hilary’s only sin here was being politically incorrect.
I think he was way over his head
Really? Ya think?
But yeah, Kerry, who actually was fucking shot while serving in country, was a big lying faker, because he said Christmas when it was some other date.
Even though his freaking ass was actually in the boat.
Whatever. Bygones. Except what’s gone is a lot of people’s lives, and a lot of people’s life savings, and god knows what else.
The man was over his head. Better luck next time. Maybe we can give him a mulligan.
What I’m most impressed by, in all of this, is the petty, small-beer, penny-ante crap that people obsess about. By ‘people’ I mean ‘conservatives’.
It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so freaking sad.
Strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Go look it up.
Shorter me:
When conservatives in this country come up with someone to run for national office – whatever national office – who isn’t a freaking god-botherer, or an Ayn Randian free market cultist, or a freaking carnival barker, then I’ll be a hell of a lot more interested in talking about the flaws and foibles of the likes of Hilary Clinton.
And no, Gary “What’s Aleppo?” Johnson doesn’t quite make the grade. Even as much as he’s miles ahead of Donald “Hey, let me hold your wallet for you?” Trump.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/feral-trumper-cold-cocks-69-year-old-protester
Do a Zimmerman on that fucker. That woman should have been carrying and shot him in the face in self defense.
We’ll see if the same folks who defended Zimmerman killing Trayvon step up in her defense.
Putin swoops in again on behalf of Trump.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dnc-statement-new-leak-blames-trump-russia
Can Trump be evil, please, because he associates corruptly with Putin and lies about it.
No? Didn’t think so.
Clinton evil for certain. Only violence is going to balance the evils out.
I’m surprised fuck libertarian Gary Johnson is not calling for non-violent protestors to carry weaponry into Trump rallies to defend themselves.
It would fit his Second Amendment platform hand in glove. Where’s the fucking NRA? Or do they need to gunned down too?
I may vote for Johnson and force him via unceasing violence to keep the promises made in the Libertarian platform to abolish Medicare and Social Security.
That promise to murder seems both an evil and a lie, but, you know, crickets.
You know, I don’t mind giving Johnson grief for not having one name of one important city at the top of mind.
But before you dismiss him in the same breath as Trump, or give him a f’ing nickname like a third grader, you should consider that someone has to represent the 50% plus of the country that doesn’t agree with you. He is a pretty good choice.
But let’s see Christians , bad. Although Hillary was out quoting scripture last week. Free market capitalists? really? Hillary is going to change that? Carnival barker? Well that’s the current President and Bill, I will admit she isn’t one of those.
Let me add a few, war monger, she is more likely to get us in a war than Trump. Johnson is the noninterventionist here.
LGBT rights – She was almost as slow as Obama to come to that table that Gary Johnson set long ago.
Reproductive rights? Johnson has always been there.
Smaller government, well she’s not for that and he is. On the other hand out of the parts of government he thinks should be shrunk the EPA isn’t one. Plus, for every department that he says should go away he prefaces it with the programs that are working should be kept, all government is not bad. Notably he wonders why there is a Homeland security department, when specifically homeland security is the job of the FBI.
I really struggle with where you think he doesn’t measure up russell. Not in a “I prefer her” kind of way, but in a “I’m going to give him a nickname and lump him in with Trump” kind of way.
And no I don’t believe there are 40 million people voting for Trump that are in that overlap. If there are 40M then there are 120M voters, because you really have to count everyone if you are going to stretch your definition of those terms to fit 40M.
“someone has to represent the 50% plus of the country that doesn’t agree with you. ”
right back atcha, Marty.
IMO Johnson is a good guy. I’m not sure two terms as governor of a state with a population of 2M people, and little or no foreign policy experience, is the best resume for POTUS. Perhaps unlike you (emphasis on perhaps) I don’t see minimizing the size of government as the most pressing issue facing the nation.
And yes, not knowing what Aleppo even freaking is, let alone its significance at this particular moment, is a really, really egregious lapse. IMO.
No offense intended by the nickname, it was simply a reference to his lack of foreign policy experience.
Is this new math? I’m lost.
As an aside, I have no idea what the “Christians bad” thing is about.
Is that a reference to my comment about god-botherers?
The two things overlap, perhaps, but are not remotely the same.
Some of this hacking is all for the best–
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/13/in-leaked-emails-iraq-war-architect-expressed-relief-that-brexit-distracted-from-u-k-war-inquiry/
“And no I don’t believe there are 40 million people voting for Trump that are in that overlap”
If I look at, not the overlap, but the combination – the union – of those groups, I have no doubt that we’re talking about 40M people.
Notably he wonders why there is a Homeland security department, when specifically homeland security is the job of the FBI.
Hey, that one’s easy to answer. It was a no-brainer act — make some organizational changes, which won’t really discommode anyone.
It won’t actually accomplish anything. But it performs the absolutely vital function of letting Congress say “Steps have been taken. We did something!” The fact that the “something” was useless? Utterly irrelevant — at least in the view of the Congressmen doing it.
Hey, donald, I’m not reading Putin’s hacked stuff. I look forward to the upside of people being poisoned.
Yes, hsh, this is exactly New Math: russell’s
“If I look at, not the overlap, but the combination – the union – of those groups” is pure New Math. Whereas Marty was looking at the overlap – the intersection – of the groups. And making the reasonable point that that’s a much smaller population.
Although it is an interesting question, isn’the it? Why do the groups with these characteristics, which don’t really have that much in common philosophically, overlap as much as they do?
“Hey, that one’s easy to answer. It was a no-brainer act — make some organizational changes, which won’t really discommode anyone.”
I am inclined to say don’t tell me you want to discuss issues ever again, but:
Reducing the footprint of several Cabinet level departments while continuing some of the programs, plus reducing military spending by 20%, raising the eligibility age for SS to 70 and means testing it…Is not nothing. Reviewing the structure of Homeland and reducing the overhead of an extra department could also be something.
Except that creating Homeland Security didn’t really eliminate anything. All it did was create an additional layer of bureaucracy. Which I would expect you, of all those here, to agree is undesirable.
P.S. Where did those other things come from? I thought the question was Why is there a [cabinet level] Homeland security department? If there is any relevance to raising the eligibility age for Social Security (desirable as that may be) I’m not seeing it.
wj, Actually I think I completely misunderstood your comment. Sorry.
Here is Clinton’s full quote:
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
Then, she continued: “But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.
Seems a helluva lot more nuanced than people are giving her credit for.
“Where did those other things come from”
Johnson’s / Libertarian Party’s platform.
And in case it’s unclear, I do not equate Johnson and Trump. Johnson’s not my guy policy-wise, at least mostly, but he’s a credible person.
I think he’s a great third-party candidate, bringing postions that are relatively out of the mainstream into the conversation.
Nothing wrong with that.
With the exception of abortion, drugs, and some foreign policy footprint reduction, the Libertarian Party platform is just standard GOP policy positions on steroids.
In actual practice, Trump’s business record reflects libertarian ideals: The aggressive selfishness, screwing your partners, and squashing those with fewer resources than you have.
with this Newsweek article, the press finally gets around to highlighting something i’ve been asking for a while:
what happens to TrumpCo if Trump wins?
because, again, if you think the Clinton Foundation is flagrantly corrupt, your precious little head’s gonna pop open when you start thinking about the things TrumpCo has its fingers in.
but Clinton is a Democrat. so, same-same. better throw your vote away.
From the Libertarian Party platform, which I guess is all “Aleppo” to Gary Johnson. Maybe that stuff he smokes is some really good shit, although I agree with the legalization of marijuana and the halting of much of the war on drugs.
http://www.lp.org/platform
“All persons are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor. We call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution. We oppose any legal requirements forcing employers to serve as tax collectors. Government should not incur debt, which burdens future generations without their consent. We support the passage of a “Balanced Budget Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution, provided that the budget is balanced exclusively by cutting expenditures, and not by raising taxes.”
Medicare, let alone any other healthcare safety net, is not in the Constitution.
“Retirement planning is the responsibility of the individual, not the government. Libertarians would phase out the current government-sponsored Social Security system and transition to a private voluntary system. The proper and most effective source of help for the poor is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals. We believe members of society will become even more charitable and civil society will be strengthened as government reduces its activity in this realm.”
70, my ass. Goodbye Social Security.
And one other passage, which shows how fucking stupid Libertarians must believe the rest of us are. All federal government employees hired since 1984 have worked under a “defined-contribution” retirement scheme, augmented a little bit by Social Security and a a very small defined-benefit plan. The original Civil Service Retirement System was phased out, with employees hired before 1984, my ex-wife and me, given the choice of switching to the new plan or being grandfathered into the old, which was only fair, a word, I realize, that is not in the Constitution either, it being a vague summary of generalizations.
“We favor repealing any requirement that one must join or pay dues to a union as a condition of government employment. We advocate replacing defined-benefit pensions with defined-contribution plans, as are commonly offered in the private sector, so as not to impose debt on future generations without their consent.”
In closing, as fucks go, Johnson may well be a nice one a person would want to share a bong with, though the privation entailed in those few platform passages may not be construed as nice by the majority of the American people.
But, I will dispense with the second-grade terminology, but only if I hear someone use the five dollar seventh-grade word “evil” applied to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton equally, as a restorative of the much-ballyhooed balance.
Then I’ll be a happy camper.
As for the GOP, may all of them emulate this guy:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ny-goper-wins-days-after-killing-himself
“screwing your partners” is a libertarian ideal?
Can I get a cite on that, maybe?
Only if it results in a net increase in your wealth.
Can I get a cite on that, maybe?
Ecclesiastes 5:10
Count, I would be happy to call Trump evil, but it is a recurring theme that I hate for you to lose the use of. I haven’t heard any unfounded rumors that he had dozens of people killed, yet. Although, he may have created the same outcomes in different ways.
The atheist libertarians of my acquaintance would likely scoff at that as part of the libertarian canon.
Christians would scoff for different reasons. What you cited was:
It’s a commentary on the human condition, not a dictate. Also a note that none of that matters in the eyes of God.
Count, I have seen Johnson and Weld speak probably 25 times. The SS changes they are running on are 70 and means testing. I suspect that both Hillary and Donald have a few positions not 100% in line with the party platform.
Slarti,
I must fess up. Admittedly, the snip is not part of the libertarian canon.* But libertarians just love slippery slope arguments, and if you assume that a society based on individual personal greed is somehow “the best” form of society, then taking advantage of your partners logically follows. Because, at heart, and in the real actual economic world, the libertarian ideal is the elevation of a form of narcissistic sociopathy as some kind of personal ideal.
It is not social liberals who have flaming debates about whether or not it is ok to sell yourself into slavery, or whether or not children are a form of private property.
The public policies that flow from the libertarian mindset are, at base, malevolent.
Just my opinion.
*The claim that Christians would “scoff” at a Bible verse is, to my mind, rather puzzling. Is not that their sacred text?
Seems a helluva lot more nuanced than people are giving her credit for.
It is, IMO. I think she was saying almost the opposite of what people are criticizing her for saying. Unfortunately, she felt the need to apologize because of the reaction to the sound-bite that was clipped from what she said. If I were to write a response to the criticism this would be my first draft:
“What I was trying to say is that many people are generalizing about Trump’s supporters – that they hold any number of bigoted opinions. And while there are some people like that among his supporters, and while I think his rhetoric encourages those people, they aren’t close to being the majority of his supporters, and they are not representative of this nation.
I also think that many of his supporters are people who have been suffering and are looking for change. We must embrace those people, not condemn them for their support of Trump. We cannot lump them in with the worst of the worst among his supporters.”
hsh, The breadth of response to her statement is interesting. People from TNC to Russell believe she should have doubled down and used graphs and charts to prove she was right. Here we find a few people who are inclined to think she really wasn’t trying to say that at all.
I don’t know you misinterpret “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?
[Laughter/applause]
The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.”
The key things there are the Right? and waiting for the applause. She wasn’t trying to make some nuanced point, she was doing just what Trump does. She was defining the “other”, how bad they are, and getting a rise from her audience.
All of which may, at an LGBT fundraiser, be effective and even expected. She was “generalizing about Trump’s supporters – that they hold any number of bigoted opinions. And while there are some people like that among his supporters, and while I think his rhetoric encourages those people,” no caveat intended.
I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince you of anything, Marty, other than that is my honest reading of what she said. Maybe not even that. It really doesn’t matter. You aren’t in play.
She wasn’t trying to make some nuanced point, she was doing just what Trump does. She was defining the “other”, how bad they are, and getting a rise from her audience.
i like this one.
racists earn the label by dividing the world into us and “others” based on superficial features. and racists make up at least half of Trump supporters. by pointing this out, Clinton is trying to divide people in “others”.
she can’t win, can she…
What I find telling is that Marty can only address specific pieces of the quote in isolation from the rest, which is how he is better able to interpret what she meant. Looking at the whole thing is spin, but looking at pieces of it out of context is analysis. I wish I could be as free of bias as Marty.
racists earn the label by dividing the world into us and “others” based on superficial features…
And not just superficial features, but features that aren’t a matter of choice, but of birth. People aren’t born racist, and they don’t have to be racist if they don’t want to be. They aren’t that way because their ancestors came from Racismia.
you’ve got to be carefully taught.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAZ8yOFFbAc
“They aren’t that way because their ancestors came from Racismia.”
Don’t be so sure. Maybe we should BUILD THE WALL, and deport them all until we figure out all that stuff.
And by “deport” I mean “hurl by means of a trebuchet, over the wall”
they came from Xenophobiastan.
what I find telling is that the defense is “if you look at the whole thing and squint your eyes with rose colored glasses on it sounds completely different than what she actually said”
They kern speeches, don’t they?
“People from TNC to Russell believe she should have doubled down and used graphs and charts to prove she was right. ”
Not me.
I was replying to your comment that there couldn’t possibly be 40 million people among Trump’s supporters who fall into one of the deplorable baskets. IMO you are mistaken.
Certainly you could find that number among the 220M folks eligible to vote. And, should those folks actually show up and cast a vote, it’ll probably be for Trump.
I have no opinion about Clinton should or should not have responded to the backlash.
russell, ok.
http://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/09/14/trump-campaign-embraces-another-white-supremacist-symbol-pepe-the-frog/
As long the percentage of anti-Semites among Trump’s Administration appointees is kept at 19.9%, American Jews are safe.
McK,
I like betting on stuff but not on DT or HRC. My bet is that both sides will claim *their* disclosure was the fuller, more detailed and both sides will find shit in the other’s disclosure that will have them going after each other hammer and tong. That’s my bet.
I will not take that bet. But here is what I will do. I will repeat my previous offer, with the stipulation that I will accept your verdict as to the outcome – Clinton, Trump, or draw. No need for quibbles.
I couldn’t vote for a libertarian because of their stands on the economy and probably the environment. I’d have to find Marty’s link above or else just look it up, but I’m reasonably sure I’d find a lot of things that would end any temptation I might have to vote for Johnson. I looked earlier and liked the anti-interventionism, but not being seriously Johnson-curious I didn’t look at the rest.
But I like the anti-interventionism and wish he had some basic knowledge of Syria and hadn’t screwed up with the Aleppo comment. As pointed out earlier, many of his critics in the press and elsewhere (including a former ambassador to Iraq) turned out not to know much more about Aleppo than he did, but that’s not an excuse. OTOH, it might be better to have a President who didn’t know about Aleppo than a person who supports “moderate” rebels who fight side-by-side with Al Qaeda. I don’t see Clinton’s foreign policy experience as a positive, as I may have hinted at earlier. It would be great if our freaking political campaigns actually had real debates about serious subjects, such as–
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-horrifying-starvation-of-yemen-continues/
Krugman whines that the press is objectively pro-Trump, which is assinine. It’s objectively pro-ignorance. A serious press corps would be raking the candidates over the coals about issues like Yemen. But in the real world, asking the candidates serious questions about real issues and probing for intelligent responses just isn’t in their job description.
Sapient, I’m all in favor of hacking Putin. But I don’t see too many people in love with him on the left, except maybe a few of the weird folks in a subset of the far left who also love Assad (I could go on about that, but it’s not relevant here).
But I guess if we can’t get Putin hacked then we just shouldn’t know anything about the crimes and bad behavior of Western governments. Fair is fair–if other governments can cover up their bad behavior to some largely unsuccessful degree, then ours should too.
With the exception of abortion, drugs, and some foreign policy footprint reduction, the Libertarian Party platform is just standard GOP policy positions on steroids.
Bobby, I think the more accurate way to look at it (based on the dates/times involved) is that the GOP platform has become Libertarian Lite.
(Sorry for the slow response. My day job has started interfering big time.)
i’d bet 1 in 10 people could find Yemen on a map. and maybe 1 in 20 could tell us what’s happening there that we need to be concerned about.
I would be happy to call Trump evil, but it is a recurring theme that I hate for you to lose the use of. I haven’t heard any unfounded rumors that he had dozens of people killed, yet. Although, he may have created the same outcomes in different ways.
If unfounded rumors work on Clinton, surely we can equally justify a little guilt by association here. So blame Trump for everyone Putin has managed to get killed in his invasions of his neighbors.
Now all we need, just for completeness, is to find something fun on Johnson….
it might be better to have a President who didn’t know about Aleppo than a person who supports “moderate” rebels who fight side-by-side with Al Qaeda.
What I think would be nice is having a President who felt comfortable, when asked about something he doesn’t instantly recognize, would ask a question. Rather than pretend to know something that he doesn’t. Because no matter how thoroughly briefed and how retentive your memory, nobody can be up on every topic — not even if you restrict that to topics relevant to the US government.
I was unclear; my apologies.
What I meant to say was that Christians would scoff at the cited text as an assertion that people should be greedy and cheat their partners. It doesn’t mean anything like that. It’s practically the opposite of that.
I actually can’t speak for Christians, though, and I don’t know that you aren’t one, so I am going to amend the above to say that I disagree with your interpretation vigorously. That part of the Bible is basically saying that Earthly accomplishments are fleeting, and so you shouldn’t get too attached to them.
End of amateur theologian lecture. I’m no kind of authority on this. But the NIV study bible encapsulates Ecclesiastes 5:5-10 as: “greater wealth does not bring satisfaction”, and the people that wrote THAT are fairly authoritative.
None of which is to say that it doesn’t say, somewhere in the Bible, that it is good and right to cheat and lie to people. I just haven’t seen it.
That part of the Bible is basically saying that Earthly accomplishments are fleeting, and so you shouldn’t get too attached to them.
Seems reasonable to me. I am only trying to convey my opinion that a foundational central tenet of the libertarian ethos is greed, not that Christianity is based on greed….which it manifestly is not, all existing earthly institutional clues to the contrary notwithstanding.*
Sorry for the confusion.
*Catholicism, massive material institutional wealth; Protestants….some of the same, with a tendency, in some quarters, toward out and out grift.
I would disagree with that, too.
I would say that libertarians place a high value on civil liberties, which I would guess nearly all libertarians would agree with, and also place a high value on self-reliance, which means different things to different people.
I don’t know any libertarians that think it’s ok to cheat or lie. I’m a little puzzled as to where you got that notion. Libertarians who will grant that the State has a right to exist (a few of them don’t) tend to place prevention of theft, fraud, and breach of contract high on the list of legitimate government functions.
Attempting to pin down where libertarians stand on the role of government is I think a waste of everyone’s time, because there’s a wide spectrum of opinion on that topic amongst people who claim to be libertarian.
I think we’ve whacked Ecclesiastes enough for today; maybe we can at least agree on that?
Numbers for the Basket of Deplorables according to Gallup here:
Percentage of Republicans polled who would vote for a gay or lesbian candidate: 61%
Percentage of Republicans polled who would vote for a Muslim candidate: 45%
That’s for Republicans at-large. Is it reasonable to assume that the percentages for both of those will be higher amongst Trump supporters?
What about 1 Corinthians 15:32 instead?
“Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die.”
😉
Trump of course prefers two Corinthians since why should one be content with just one?
(That last question is laced with sarcasm, BTW).
I would say that libertarians place a high value on civil liberties
Name one major brand of political identity in this country that does not.
…and also place a high value on self-reliance, which means different things to different people.
Same response.
In other words, self-described libertarians are like just about all US citizens.
Not a very useful taxonomy if you ask me.
What sets them apart is the almost mystical worship of the system of private property, and the extremism they advocate when it comes to the prerogatives of those who own it.
But agree we can give Ecclesiastes a bit of a rest for now.
The problem with all of those polls of Republican bigots, in my mind, is Nikki Haley. The Sikh governor of supposedly one of the most bigoted states in the country. So, I am not sure that they measure real racism very accurately.
Libertarians want to stay out of your bedroom and your wallet!!!
Haley:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_Haley#2010_election_for_Governor
Kind of like the principles this country was founded upon, right? No seizure of private property without compensation, no search and seizure without a warrant, enforcement of contracts.
Mystical, though. It’s almost as if it these principles sprung forth out of a vacuum.
To back to the original subject of the post – more happy polls! Jeebus.
I think the principles you’ve described are but a smidge of the overall system of private property bobbyp is referring to as being worshipped (mystically) by libertarians.
I think it mostly involves equating free (by some definition of free) markets with ideal markets (which don’t actually exist) that are thought to maximize … well, something or other.
Nikki Haley is a convert to Christianity. She also has never been a Muslim.
Congress has two Buddhists, one Hindu, one Atheist, and two Muslims. All are Democrats.
The Republican’s lone non-Christian in Congress is Jewish.
There is only one US Governor that is not some sort of Judeo-Christian. She’s Buddhist and a Democrat.
When will this oppression of Christians end? ;^)
Nikki Haley’s first reaction to the Charleston church murders was to elide the racial motivations, the sole motivations for the murders:
https://newrepublic.com/article/122072/charleston-suspect-racist-republicans-claim-his-motives
Now, upon reflection and pressure from those fucking liberals, she came around to a more realistic view, but still, the murderer himself, Dylan Roof, told the complete TRUTH, so help him God, right upfront.
Not like she didn’t have company in ignoring Dylan Roof’s, that Republican Trump deplorable, truth-telling:
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/some-republicans-cant-seem-to-admit-that-racism-was-behind-the-charleston-murders/
My favorite: Rick Perry: “It was an accident”.
To their credit, Kasich and Carson acknowledged with not a lot of elision, race hatred’s central, sole role in the murders.
Given Roof’s forthright truth telling compared to his fellow Trump-Republican mealy-mouthedness, I’d expect if he announced his candidacy for President, he’d be surging in the polls.
Certainly, he’s not evil like Hillary.
Still, Haley’s one hell of a history buff about the state she supposedly governs:
http://www.nationalmemo.com/sc-gov-nikki-haley-the-u-s-has-never-passed-laws-based-on-race-and-religion-um/
Besides, racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic, gay beaters in North Carolina and points every which way will vote for a Sikh bearing tax cuts and laws that limit minority voting.
Deplorables have standards and priorities too. And feelings.
There by the grace of God goes Nikki Haley.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/10/terrorist-go-back-to-your-country-attacker-yelled-in-alleged-assault-of-sikh-man/
Those aren’t fucking Democrats beating the shit out of Sikhs.
No, they are Trump deplorables who voted for George W.
North Carolina? Yeah, there too. But South Carolina is what I meant.
Mystical, though. It’s almost as if it these principles sprung forth out of a vacuum.
Now that you mention it, that describes the interior of Ayn Rand’s skull perfectly.
Kind of like the principles this country was founded upon, right?
A straight line I shall not, with all due respect, touch upon today.
To (get) back to the original subject of the post…
538.com still has the probability of a Clinton win at north of 60%, which is pretty darned good.
Even if Trump won both Ohio and Florida, I don’t believe it will get him over the finish line. He has to run the table, and his fingers are not up to the task.
Gary Johnson could well cost the GOP some electoral votes. It will be interesting to see if the GOP has the same level of vitriolic argument about ‘lesser evilism’ that “the left” has endured wrt the Nader vote in 2000.
Too bad she didn’t conduct an adhoc colonscopy on the thug whole she was Moe-slapping him, so we can get those medical records on the record:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/flint-pastor-interrupts-trump-political-speech
See, that uppityness by the black Pastor provided Trump another one percent jump in the polls in swing states among the still undecided Mason Dixon fencesitters.
Scott Baio dropped his Cheetos on to his Secretary of Health and Subhuman Service Cabinet application and called the Pastor a n*gger c*nt when he saw the footage.
Trump just won the election.
We live in a truth or dare world now.
I call for all of the emails of OBWI participants and all Americans’ to be released publicly so we know what each of us REALLY thinks (and spells).
America is a little like a marriage. Too much truth leads to divorce.
I have nothing to fear, since my real crimes are committed right here in the plain light of day. My emails are fluff in comparison, since I’m relatively normal in real life.
I hope these email releases do not lead to Clinton, as they surely will Trump, snubbing Powell’s counsel during international crises over the next four years.
Ya ever notice though how Powell, at some point during every election cycle, after playing both sides of the street his entire political career, turns on everyone, friend and foe.
I would add to that last paragraph, “and becomes the center of attention while at the same time acting as though he’s the shy one.
The former secretary of State is has 48 percent support among likely voters, compared with 43 percent for Trump. In the August 25 Quinnipiac poll, Clinton led 51 percent to 41 percent.
In a four-way race Clinton’s lead narrows considerably. Clinton gets 41 percent support, Trump gets 39 percent, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson claims 13 percent and Green Party nominee Jill Stein gets 4 percent.
I fear that Johnson may give the left another Nader moment, if anyone.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/quinnipiac-poll-trump-halves-clintons-lead/ar-BBwa3xB?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp
Marty,
With only 960 people (nationwide!) in the survey and a 3.2% margin of error, I’m not going to bet my life, or even yours, on that poll.
In addition, quinnipiac polls are notoriously biased:
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/07/13/quinnipiac-universitys-poll.html
It would be more interesting to know where (which states) this alleged slippage is taking place.
I fear that Johnson may give the left another Nader moment, if anyone.
oh, he’ll be your President Trump, too, Marty.
“oh, he’ll be your President Trump, too, Marty.”
Unfortunately, yes he will, or she will. I so want Johnson on that debate stage. Miracles can happen.
OK, this is funny. It is not meant by me to be anything but funny. I wish it said Trump(that evil guy) instead of Clinton.
http://www.theonion.com/article/newly-redesigned-hillaryclintoncom-allows-users-to-53942
“I fear that Johnson may give the left another Nader moment, if anyone.
Yes, I expect so too. Which kind of queers your and Gary’s concern for maintaining the EPA, which Trump has pledged to abolish, with NO push back from the Republican bought-off corporate polluters in Congress.
In fact, it is this very thing that may get, if they aren’t already, the Kochs back on Trump’s bandwagon.
So here’s what’s going to happen when the EPA is gone and Johnson is bleating in the irrelevant wilderness about Aleppo.
There will be an assassination force, thousands strong, heavily, stealthily armed, a loose confederation of militia, since government, that hated item, as stepped out of the way, who steps in and takes the polluters out, in their homes, in their beds.
It will have all the attributes of pure American character .. the Second Amendment, anti-government violence, taking care of business without mediation from hated government, citizens rising up, like savage ghosts, and bringing justice into equilibrium against those who fuck them.
Ya ever notice though how Powell, at some point during every election cycle, after playing both sides of the street his entire political career, turns on everyone, friend and foe
Indeed – “I consider Hillary a friend, but I wouldn’t want to have to vote for her…” (that’s from memory; I might have paraphrased slightly) was a nice example.
(Though given his opinions on Trump, it’s likely he will ‘have to’ vote for her.)
Just a few items ….. there are so many … that will become THE way of doing things, new traditions, the new precedence in political campaigning, especially for Presidential candidates, but also across the board, as Donald Trump becomes President of the United States as a result of this eminently killable disgrace and excuse for an American election:
From now on, no candidate need release their medical records.
From now on, no candidate need release their tax returns.
From now on, no candidate need release a record of their business dealings.
From now on, no candidate need release any information about their prior government experience or dealings with the government as a private citizen.
From now on, the Fourth Estate will be precluded from covering candidates in any substantive way and fully ignored. They will appear merely as props to be called liars and cheats, as Donald Trump does at every appearance.
From now on, violence against political opponents at campaign appearances will be de rigueur behavior. Weaponry will be part of the dress code at all political events, as it is in every shithole dictatorship around the world. The Democratic Party needs to get on this bandwagon tout suite and start beating the shit, I mean really hurting them, out of conservatives and Republicans who show up at Democratic events. Get armed and use those weapons just as Republicans do. Democratic politicians should exhort their partisan crowds from the dais to have some fun and tear protestors limb from limb as a way of juking their poll numbers. It works.
Dark money and no transparency whatsoever about who and what is funding our electoral politics will be permanently entrenched. The U.S. Supreme Court shall henceforth conduct all their cases in total privacy, no press either, to prevent murderous violence against their rulings that have entrenched total corruption of the system.
All new nominees will remain anonymous, their identities secret as any Legislative Branch hearings and vetting are dispensed with.
Guns for all, voting only for some. We’ll see how that works out.
http://juanitajean.com/fun-with-guns/
Candidates who are convicted murderers and proud torturers will be held to be more fit for running the government, in the judgement of the pristinely moral shit-for-brains American electorate, compared to run-of-mill liars, and chronic masturbaters, and jaywalkers.
Just a few snapshots of what’s coming.
Perhaps in a few days, I’m provide a list of what’s coming in the way of chaotic, constant violent civil strife as true patriots destroy a Trump Presidency and Republican Party filth on a national basis as the FIRST dollar of taxation by Republicans and any of their regulation whatsoever is held to be just cause for unending murderous insurrection.
I’m not going to be politically correct for delicate conservative Trump ears. I agree with Trump Junior that the gas chambers should be warming up so he and his family and their deplorables can be fed into them hairdos/toupees first:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donald-trump-jr-gas-chambers-joke
Now watch this. Trumps polls will rise as a result of Trump Juniors’ political incorrectness, while mine will plummet as a result of political correctness.
See, here’s the idea:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jason-kander-gun-ad-blindfolded-rifle
His next ad should be him entering NRA headquarters with that fully assembled and loaded weapon, sans blindfold, and asking the receptionist if Wayne La Pierre wants to step outside.
The concept of the Count as “politically correct” is sending my brain into a hard loop. This simply does not compute!
“while mine will plummet as a result of political correctness”
Out of the pool of likely voters on your popularity you have very high loyalty numbers. Not likely to lose a lot.
I have a feeling my pollster, Marty, is not fluffing my numbers.
I have a feeling my pollster, Marty, is not fluffing my numbers.
Then what good are they?
Perhaps what we are seeing here is evidence (evidence!) that, with the Count and Trump, one is the other’s evil twin.
Which one is the evil twin is left as an exercise to the reader.
back off topic…..Atrios strikes gold:
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2016/09/personal-responsibility.html
I liked bobby’s atrios link–I read atrios sporadically, but maybe should do so more often. I also liked a slightly earlier link that led to this–
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/14/mps-deliver-damning-verdict-on-camerons-libya-intervention?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=190206&subid=15871750&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
We need these sorts of reports in the US.
Caution – slightly stale:
I wonder if there’s still a spot in the Trump administration for Chris Christie. Perhaps Secretary of Education?
I’ll happily submit my DNA for analysis to determine any relation to Trump.
Certainly not a twin, and I predict not even of the same species.
Clinton has returned to campaigning.
Is it really her, or a body double?
Perhaps it’s an alien body double. Or perhaps she’s dead after all, and the creature we see is zombie Hilary.
Perhaps it’s Huma Abedin in a Hilary Clinton outfit, fulfilling her long-long-long-range plan to be elected in the guise of HRC and institute a national regime of sharia upon her election as POTUS.
Of course it’ll be easier for her to do that after 8 years of the atheist communist Muslim Kenyan softening up the American people with his road-to-serfdom health insurance meddling.
They are a crafty people, those Islamo-fascists!
Those of us who more or less accept at face value that Clinton was sick, and now she’s better, are obviously the dupes of the great left wing propaganda machine.
Wake up sheeple!
She is back. She said:
“I want you to think with me for a minute about how I certainly feel lucky, when I’m under the weather, I can afford to take a few days off,” she said. “Millions of Americans can’t. They either go to work sick or they lose a paycheck, don’t they? Lots of Americans still don’t even have insurance, or they do, but it’s too expensive for them to actually use. So they toss back some Tylenol, they chug orange juice and hope that the cough or the virus goes away on its own.”
“That’s why I got into this race. I am running for everyone working hard to support their families,” she added later. “Everyone who’s been knocked down but gets back up.”
I wasn’t a fan of hers in 2008, but I love her now. Her campaign has been epic. I’ve been giving a few more bucks whenever I see I have it to spare.
Meanwhile, although I mentioned it earlier, nobody’s joined with me in celebrating the incredible economic news. (And, of course, the poor are still with us and income inequality, etc.). But even with the obstructionist Congress, the early remedies to the 2008 recession have yielded huge, wonderful results, as opposed to the European austerity regimes.
I’m so hopeful, but nervous.
nobody’s joined with me in celebrating the incredible economic news.
My bad. Let me correct that.
It’s fantastic that incomes at the lower end are finally starting to pick up. It’s been a damned long time coming, and the reason it’s been such a long time coming is 35 years of trickle-down supply-side fundamentalism.
I’m looking for some trickle-up.
what russell said. Thank you!
Yeah, but too MANY folks have jobs now, which will cause wage inflation at the low end and for the middle class. And certainly way too many people, most of them working, have health insurance now.
It’s getting so’s a guy can stop at a red light intersection and no longer find some parasite schmuck to belittle through my tinted windows and accuse of sucking taxpayer teat.
Did ya know many positions are going unfilled because folks have more than one choice for gainful employment?
That’s gotta stop. Think how happy we were just a few years ago when labor was desperate and could be had on the cheap
I loved that adults had to compete with their kids for the same job classifications. I’m telling ya, that’s when America was rolling in it.
I heard Ayn Rand had to go into an office complex and kick some employed geezer in the short ribs in his work cubicle, because he wasn’t lying in his own puke in his customary spot down the street for her to drop kick on the way to her lecture series called “Work: The Curse of The Drinking Classes”.
Now people want to be paid for producing. Not only that but get this, they want to be paid more than they were paid in 2007 for the same work.
Time to raise interest rates and shut down this employment bubble. Time for more and tighter austerity. Time for more layoffs, hiring freezes, pay cuts, and work shaming.
Make half of America beg again. This country needs the old time employment anxiety that made people pick themselves up by their bootstraps, stand on a chair, and hang themselves from the overhead light fixture out of sheer desperation.
That’s the American way to reduce unemployment.
But really, let’s balance this story out. Things have never been so bad. They can’t get any worse. All government labor statistics that show improvement are lies perpetrated by folks who should be unemployed.
Donald Trump, Roger Stone and his Brietbartian White House staff will remedy that problem by bringing back Richard Nixon’s practice of ferreting out Jewish heritage among the employees at the Department of Labor and doing what needs to be done.
Hillary Clinton is evil.
I don’t understand why it is less of an issue that Trmp is facing trial on RICO charges. Can anyone think of a candidate for the Presidency that is acing a trail on serious charges? As for HRC lying–she has not owned up fully on voting for the authorization, but she is nowhere near Trump when it come sto lying. That man cannot open hiw mouth without spouting whoopers, one after another. It it really is a false equivalence to call her a liar compared to him. Also don’t Trump supporters mind him being in hock to the Russians?
well wonkie, he is not facing rico charges,he is involved in a civil rico class action suit. He doesn’t seem to have any business interests in Russia, tax records could show he owes Russians money, but there isn’t any evidence of that public. And, as for lying, that seems to be in the eye of the beholder for both of them.
Of course all the good news (apart from being all lies) are the result of GOP obstructionism (which naturally does not exist either). In short the country has gone totally down the drain because the dictator in the WH steamrolled the helpless and docile opposition. All perceptions in contrast to that are caused by some nasty chemicals added to the drinking water or spread via jetplane exhausts. Not that any chemicals are in any way nasty, you out-of-control EPAistas.
Imo anyone claiming that (s)he runs for POTUS out of purely idealistic reasons is either lying or so naive to be unfit. I believe that many run with the intention to do some good things in office but that is not the same. The office itself (=the ambition for it) is a strong motivator and I see nothing fundamentally wrong with that.
Trump may be the first ‘serious’ contender though who is in it 100% for himself and 0% for political reasons.
As for lying being in the eye of the beholder for both of them, I believe every independent fact-checking site/organisation has him with a vast numerical advantage over her in the lying department.
Sapient, I looked into giving her a donation, but of course foreign nationals are not allowed to do so. My late father used to say that everybody in the world ought to be able to vote for the American president, because we are all dramatically affected by his/her policies. Every foreign policy expert I hear is convinced that a Trump victory would be a) something that would change the world, and particularly the democratic West, greatly for the worse and gladden the hearts of dictators everywhere, and b) would be Putin’s most longed-for result, now that the continued weakening of the EU has been achieved by Brexit. The commentators are trying to use dispassionate, “expert” language, but you can hear the panic and disbelief in their voices as they have to even contemplate the possibility.
Here’s hoping HRC’s 3 days were enough to see off the pneumonia. I had it when I was 39, and completely healthy otherwise, and it wasn’t diagnosed til I had had a wracking cough for weeks, admittedly in a freezing New York winter. I can’t remember how long it took to completely go, but I think it was longer than 3 days, and I didn’t have to contemplate several weeks of non-stop, stressful work.
An interesting counterpoint to Hartmut’s comment
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-media-transparency-214250
“He doesn’t seem to have any business interests in Russia”
maybe the more interesting question is how many, and which, russians have business interests in trump. and/or, how important russian oligarchal money is to his business model.
is the trump empire going into a blind trust if he’s elected?
nice point about the rico thing. he wouldn’t even have that if that damned judge wasn’t blinded by his mexican heritage.
still waiting to see how the trump foundation charitable donations to FL public office holders plays out, though.
eyes, beholders. no difference between clinton and trump.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/10/the-cold-war-is-over
An article bt Christopher Hitchens’s rightwing brother. Parts of it are silly, but most of it isn’t. It’s a weird world where the ” liberals” are the ones screaming about Russia and some conservatives are the voice of reason. Well, perhaps not that weird, since Cold War hawkish liberals were not uncommon once upon a time.
And one reason I avoid listening to Clinton too much is so I can vote for her. Anyone so willing to pander to Saudi views in Yemen and to suck up to a racist like Netanyahu is in a poor position to criticize Trump’s love affair with Putin.
“still waiting to see how the trump foundation charitable donations to FL public office holders plays out, though.”
I will be really disappointed if Pam Bondi actually did trade off campaign donations for dropping the investigation. Mostly because she has been a pretty good AG in lots of other respects.
“nice point about the rico thing. he wouldn’t even have that if that damned judge wasn’t blinded by his mexican heritage.”
It is tough for an honest con man to get a good judge bought in California these days.
It’s a weird world where the ” liberals” are the ones screaming about Russia and some conservatives are the voice of reason.
It’s an even weirder world where the “progressives” (or however you label yourself) excuse Putin’s rampant civilian bombing, imperialist incursions, and domestic thuggery (and attempt to destabilize the US electoral process) because you don’t quite understand that we are trying to thread the needle to prevent a war with Iran. Strange that no matter how many times you’re asked to comment on the Iran deal, and the price the we have to pay for it, you refuse.
It’s a weird world where the ” liberals” are the ones screaming about Russia
i haven’t seen too many liberals screaming about Russia. i see a lot of them screaming about Trump’s adoration of the corrupt autocratic strongman who controls Russia, however.
That article about Russia is interesting, but being an ‘expat’, I’ve followed the story of Ames and Taibbi in Moscow with Exile.
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2010/02/exile-201002
My own take is it is not bringing back the Cold War as Hitchens claims, it is that the infusion of Western capitalism hybridized with the post Soviet collapse to create a pretty horrific offspring. The point is not to complain that Putin is some sort of unique evil, or that the US is morally head and shoulders above Russia, but to note that the whole economic system favors the application of force and violence.
Hitchens the younger wants to claim, in a manner similar to Trump bitching about the basket of deplorables comment, that somehow complaining about this is making all those long suffering Russians out to be evil. Certainly, our national discourse about other countries often imputes that to the citizens of a country who are just basically minding their own business while we merrily claim all the good things and reject the problems of our country, but the reason why one needs to be conscious of Trump’s Russian connections is because it is just like our Wall Street would be with absolutely no restraint. Which is why Trump is so drawn to it.
That. Squared, and then cubed.
Peter Hitchens is a relic of a bygone era. I’m afraid the linked article lost me at “Like most Englishmen..”
As lj says, it’s little to do with the Cold War – and it’s not irrational to be concerned about a quasi-dictator with nukes, whose prominent critics have a tendency to meet unexplained deaths.
and it’s not irrational to be concerned about a quasi-dictator with nukes, whose prominent critics have a tendency to meet unexplained deaths.
This is certainly true, and a great reason not to vote for Clinton. Oh, wait, were you talking about someone else?
Actually, one could say that Putin is a thug (and Hitchens says that) and also say that the American reaction is over the top. Putin is not Hitler. Saddam was not Hitler. Ho Chi Minh was not Hitler. Gaddafi was not Hitler. But somehow every nasty person we happen not to be supporting becomes the Worst Person in the World and it is frankly entertaining to see how quickly Democrats fall into the traditional pattern. Is Trump a pandering idiot? Sure. So are some other politicians I could name–Clinton, for one. Is Trump worse? Yes, by far, but on other topics. On this topic he is guilty of supporting the wrong thug. I don’t think Trump even knows enough to be a hypocrite on this subject, but most of the Democrats bashing him for his support for Putin are saying absolutely zero, zip, nada, about Obama and Yemen. Or Clinton’s repetition of the Saudi line that Iran is the one making mischief in Yemen.
“excuse Putin’s rampant civilian bombing”
The only place I see that is in certain subsets of the far left (and also parts of the right) who endorse Assad and Putin’s behavior in Syria. There are way too many people who think you have to take sides in these vicious civil wars, as though the crimes of one side excuse the other. But utterly fascinating that you’d bring up civilian bombing. It’s the US and British-supported Saudis that are bombing civilians in Yemen, plunging the country into a humanitarian crisis, complete with photos of starving children, though I haven’t seen those on the front pages yet. Democrats who profess to be outraged by Putin’s crimes are just partisan hacks if they don’t talk about the ones we are supporting.
Not sure when this will become front page news, something that a Presidential candidate is supposed to talk about.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/photos-malnourished-children-show-horrors-yemens-forgotten-war/story?id=42058728
policy is not going to be a major topic this election. it will be about personality: Trump’s primarily.